Aptana Jaxer has been updated to 0.9.5 providing increased performance for server-side JavaScript and a host of other enhancements to make End-to-End Ajax development easier.
Aptana Studio users can get the latest via Help > Software Updates. Otherwise, download the latest now.
- Increased Performance
- Aptana Jaxer's core is now based on Mozilla FireFox Beta3 and thus delivers improved JS performance and memory management.
- Jaxer now pre-parses scripts to bytecode for faster execution during callbacks.
- More Natural JS Environment
- Window and document objects on the server-side now parallel more closely how you work with them on the client-side. This means a more natural coding style with server-side JavaScript in Jaxer and a more browser compatible experience.
- Jaxer no longer inlines external scripts to the page, this allows for correct use of browser cache on client side content and makes 'view source' a much more pleasant experience. This also applies to Jaxer's ClientFramework (the client-side JavaScript Jaxer puts in pages to facilitate callbacks and remote method invocation). Instead such external scripts are cachebusted with the buildnumber so that upgrading the server will automatically expire any old client side cache copies.
- A new autoload feature has been added to allow for an entire script file to be cached server-side and reloaded on every regular and callback request. This is ideal for loading JavaScript libraries server-side. A configuration option is provided to expire the script every time the containing page is accessed, to ease development cycles -- this is the default config setting. See http://www.aptana.com/node/202 for a full example.
- Improved Platform Support
- Significantly improved Unix support. Jaxer now builds and runs on Solaris too!
- mySQL support is now also provided for Mac OSX
- A number of Windows Vista security/UAC related problems have been addressed
- API Enhancements
- Jaxer's file system API has been updated -- mostly around the 'quick' static method. For example: Jaxer.File.chmod('myfile.tx',0400)
- A simple Stopwatch timer API now allows for timing measurements in code.