Brendan Eich Discusses Python for XUL Scripting

Brendan Eich sent us a link to his weblog post about using Python for XUL scripting. At the moment, only JavaScript can be used for scripting in XUL applications but Brendan describes how Mark Hammond is adding support for the popular Python programming language as well. Support for Python in XUL will land in the Mozilla 1.9 timeframe and is expected to be used primarily by developers of extensions and standalone XULRunner applications.

Work is currently ongoing to allow languages other than JavaScript to be used for DOM scripting, which is a necessary step to enable Python support to be implemented. In theory, this will also allow support for other scripting languages to be added to the Mozilla framework. However, there are no plans to support any languages other than JavaScript in webpages.

Although future releases of Mozilla applications such as Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird will ship with support for Python XUL scripting, a Python interpreter will not be included. This is expected to mostly be an issue on Windows (Mac OS X and most Linux distributions already include a Python environment) but Brendan expects this problem to be solved soon.

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