PyXPCOM - Python bindings for Mozilla XPCOM technology

Thursday January 11th, 2001

Activator writes in:
"ActiveState is pleased to announce the first release of the Python bindings for the Mozilla XPCOM (Cross-Platform COM) technology."

To find out more about this, click the Full Article link.

Full Article...

#1 Is this really a good idea?

by thelem

Saturday January 13th, 2001 2:59 PM

ActiveState want to integrate this into the MozillaCVS, but I wonder what advantages this would bring?

I can see two obvious disadvantages - the posibility of additional security bugs and a fatter mozilla, but I can't see the advantages.

#2 Re: Is this really a good idea?

by tseng_mike

Saturday January 13th, 2001 7:40 PM

Depends how you see mozilla, if you see it as just a browser, then its pretty much pointless. But if you see mozilla as a platform to develop application, its a great news. As it allow different language to create/use component to make your app.

#3 Don't be myopic

by mewilcox

Monday January 15th, 2001 8:06 PM

The reason why PyXPCOM (and eventually PerlXPCOM)is because it allows us to build GUIs using Mozilla as the rendering engine but the application logic using Python and Perl. Why is that important? Well because it's generally much guicker to build applications with Python and Perl than it is with C/C++ (or is there a silent army of XPCOM C++ coders I've never heard of?).

Enabling this interface will allow a new breed of applications to be built that can utilize the Web for network transport and HTML (and XUL) for building the interface, but without relying on clumsy CGI/Servlets trying to hack a real user experience with just HTML. That is the whole point of XPCOM. Python and Perl interfaces to XPCOM extend that ability to the thousands (millions?) of Python and Perl programmers out there.

This truly brings Mozilla up to the same level as IE (IE already is a component for VB on Windows).

FWIW, this code is not added to the browser, it's simply a scripting interface to XPCOM. In fact you probably could build your own browser with just a little work. Customized browsers are probably the future of browsers. That job has just gotten a little bit easier.

#4 Yeah

by eXv2

Wednesday February 7th, 2001 1:38 PM

I agree wholeheartedly with this response...If all someone wants out of Mozilla is a browser, then he's got that already. But, aren't we all a bit tired of hearing how evil IE is and that it's so inferior? If this were true, why are thousands of programmers using that web browser component all the time to do things not dreamed of by the average web-vision-only developer? I think that abstracting XPCOM and such to function similar to ActiveScripting and the like is a fantastic idea. As this poster asked, is there really an army of XPCOM C++ coders...Or, is there even an army of JS coders? No, there isn't, but there is an army of Perl and Python programmers and those languages are mature and well-supported. This is great news to me.