Is there a tool to measure the performance of my firefox extension. And is there a toll which part of my script takes lot of CPU?
You seem to be looking for a JavaScript profiler. Unfortunately, I don't know any good profilers for this. The usual recommendation would be Firebug but it doesn't work for add-ons (maybe with Chromebug but I'm not sure about that). There is also XUL profiler which is outdated but might still work in newer Firefox versions (you can use Add-on Compatibility Reporter to install and test incompatible add-ons). And there is JavaScript Deobfuscator which is meant for something different but can do some basic profiling as well. There you can adjust the filters to include only JavaScript files of your extension and see all the functions that are being called - along with the number of calls and the average execution time. This is sometimes good enough to identify the bottlenecks.
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I'm working on a javascript profiler for Mozilla Firefox, that would let me obtain all available information about the execution of the script on the page (DOM object calls, events, calls to functions like Math.random(), document and navigator object calls, as well as code's own execution tree with arguments etc etc).
Currently, I think that the best way to implement this sort of profiler is by modifying Firefoxe's own source code.
One way to go about it is to find all implementations for corresponding method calls and add profiler log calls there. But there are 2 problems with this approach:
The methods and objects are widely scattered, and I'm not really familiar with the source code at this moment. Tracking down all the functions and making sure that the profiler works as intended will take A LOT of time
When created in this way, the profiler is going to be difficult to maintain when Firefox source code evolves with time.
So I was wondering, if there is a single class/a small group of key classes in firefox source, that could be modified to allow me to collect the information I want? Or is there a better way of doing what I need to do?
The latest Aurora release of Firefox has a basic profiler built into its developer tools, or you can download a more advanced interface from the Mozilla Add-ons site which works with Firefox 16 or later.
I have the source code from a plugin for second life to play in a browser but the problem is it's been created for Firefox 3.5, so what I'm trying to do is to bring it up to speed and upgrade it to the current Firefox.
Unfortunately I'm not sure how to go about this as I am literally just looking into this now, any help is greatly appreciated
What's your main aim here? Are you interested in simply making the extension work somehow in the latest firefox or are you more interested in optimizing performance?
Optimization of an application is a very general topic. You can look into the upgrades Gecko has gone through in the recent versions. If there seems to be any specific module for which Gecko is now offering a better interface/compatibility, you might try adapting the same. Again, this is really the programmer's judgment and skill which lets him draw the boundary between feasible and non-feasible development. For a module which is extensively linked with many other modules, it might be a good idea to leave it as it is to avoid sleepless nights (of course that's just my opinion. For some, that is the real kick :D).
If you are interested in creating high-performance plugins, you might like to give Google Web Toolkit a try. It is a Java library which compiles java into optimized javascript introducing various performance oriented quirks. I understand that it is not possible to switch an entire application to GWT easily and wouldn't help you just now, but I think it is worth mentioning for future use.
On the other hand, if you are just interested in making the extension work, you may look into Nightly Tester Tools, which is an extension used to override add on compatibility.
I can find some articles on how to use them but I can't seem to find anywhere peoples impression of them using them in real projects. I have been trying to figure out how to use them and I've had alot of problems.
Can someone out there who uses these tools on the job give me thier impression? Are there better alternate tools available? Using these really just a waste of time?
With Coded UI Tests I see how they are good for basic javascript checking but its so basic of a example I don't think it is worth it. With web tests I like how they work but when I activate code coverage/ASP.NET profiling it doesnt work half the time.
I tried both Selenium and Coded UI for integration testing the project I am working on. I wrote a blog article with my impressions.
The bottom line for me is that both Selenium and Coded UI are still far from perfect, but better than manual testing. I am using Selenium right now, though I might revisit CodedUI if a few things would be fixed in a later version.
experience with Selenium and VS Coded UI test for web apps.
Better than manual testing in my eyes, though the tests are at times hard to maintain and often need to be changed manually to make them more robust. Both tools have browser plugins which can generate tests automatically, but this code is generally not very resilient towards changes in the HTML (in case of web apps).
You will be disappointed if you expect an automated test run orders of magnitude faster than a manual tester. I think the aim of the vendors is to get the automated test execute aboit twice as fast as a manual tester (that can feel painfully slow if you have a large set of tests).
I have used both selenium 1.0 (currently deprecated 2.0 for my dev environment) and visual studio 2010 web testing. There is no doubt, vs 2010 web testing tool is by far (and i mean by far) better than selenium 1.0 and 2.0 (in beta now) in terms of tooling, robustness and the different kinds of metric you can measure (load balance analysis etc). The one good thing also is that it can run your tests in firefox and other browsers as well(provided you have those browsers installed - i believe. Not sure on that one). Selenium is good and have been around for a while. Has a lot of community support but... it can be frustrating. They are currently in transition to 2.0 so I think things will get better and improve after 2.0. In short, if your development environment is .NET with vs 2010, you will get the best ROI by using of the web testing tools.
Disclaimer: I don't work for Microsoft and I am in no way affiliated with MS. My comment above is based on my experience and my only.
As with (most) all Microsoft tools they will do the job--provided you read plenty of materials to understand how to use them and you understand their limitations. If you are looking for full-featured, high-quality, relatively intuitive tools then look to RedGate.
Microsoft tools will do everything, but nothing terribly well.
I did a test in chrome and firefox, chrome with no extension, firefox with a dozen.
The test is form goolge (perhaps is optimized for chrome?), here and the result was:
Firefox: 118
Chrome: 2479
So I wonder: the benchmark is also influenced by the installed extensions or chrome is really so much higher than Firefox in performance?
Yes extensions affect performance... Especially in IE7/IE8.
As a general rule, use whatever extensions you want/need but consider that every one of them may affect your overall performance.
Some extensions however (e.g. Firebug) may slow down Firefox... but their assistance in developing web sites / applications far outweighs any performance hit.
Suppose I'm writing a 2d tile based MMORPG.
Furthermore suppose I hate flash.
Lastly, suppose I only need my code to run in the latest safari, latest firefox, and latest chrome.
What are the limits to what I can and can't do? (Are there examples of good game engines that only require a recent web browser)?
Look into HTML5 Canvas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_element
The latest versions of the browsers you mention already support it.
Check out the Unity3D engine: http://www.unity3d.com
Cross-browser, cross-platform, although your users would have to download the unity browser plugin...
There's also the Raphaël javascript library...it does a very nice job of abstracting a lot of the heavy lifting you'd have to do otherwise! The memory footprint seems decently light as well (from my small-scale playing around with it anyway).
For something that works for the user, OOBE (without add-ins etc); Javascript is probably the only unified functionality that exists between all browsers.
The browser is surprisingly quite capable (at least Chrome is), this is something that Google Chrome is attempting to promote (see http://www.chromeexperiments.com/). Notice some however, that experiments are often laggy or unworkable in other web browsers.
As for a list of things that are and aren't capable; that would take a fair while to compile.
In regards specifically to a 2D tile based game, I wouldn't say it isn't possible, but it may be quite difficult to create. As mentioned before, most browsers (apart from the stand-out; Google Chrome), suffer from limited resources. Therefore resources wise, it may be difficult to implement and would defiantly require a lot of requirement fore planning.
Java applets are also possible...
You could also move to 3D. While it does require a plug-in (although is being integrated into Chrome), the results are undeniable.
"O3D is an open-source web API for creating rich, interactive 3D applications in the browser." http://code.google.com/apis/o3d/. The video is quite amazing actually -- especially the live map editing (e.g. removing sprites).