IE 5.5: Formatting, URIs, and Stack Operations

In this column we present a collection of new methods and operators for Internet Explorer 5.5. These methods enhance Explorer in many different ways. Formatting capabilities are strong in this version. People always ask how to set the number of digits after the decimal place. With IE 5.5, this is as easy as calling the function toFixed(fractionDigits), or one of the other related formatting functions (toString(), toFixed(), toExponential(), toPrecision()). The toLocaleString() is extremely interesting in that it formats the Date, Number, and Array objects as defined in the control panel of your PC.

The second improvement area is the new support for the Stack and Queue abstract data types: push(), pop(), shift(), and unshift(). No longer do you have to define these data functions yourself, rather JavaScript provides you with a set of consistent functions to manage your arrays, modeled as LIFO (Last In First Out) or FIFO (First In First Out).

Internet Explorer 5.5 also provides a new set of methods to query for object-property relationships. You can ask if a property is in an object, if an object owns a property, and if the property will appear in any enumeration of the object's properties.

In addition, the new version introduces new URI encoding and decoding functions. You can now stop using the escape() and unescape() methods for converting non-alphanumeric characters to the Internet-standard ISO Latin-1 character set.

In this column you will learn:

• How to format numbers according to program instructions
• How to format data according to environment settings
• How to push and pop array elements
• How to shift and unshift array elements
• How to detect object-property relationship
• How to encode and decode URIs

We also include the listing of our push(), pop(), shift(), and unshift() implementation.

Next: How to format numbers according to program instructions