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This apparently relies on Silverlight to work. That's fine, but it would nice if pages using it gave some indication why nothing happens if you don't Silverligh
by ekiru 16y ago
This apparently relies on Silverlight to work. That's fine, but it would nice if pages using it gave some indication why nothing happens if you don't Silverlight. The only reason I know that the problem is lack of Silverlight is from the other HN comments. That is decidedly not user-friendly.
- Goosey 16y agoIt is a bold first step. I sincerely hope Microsoft includes this functionality standard in the next release of IE. It would be refreshing to see them pushing innovation on the browser front. I can see Firefox following suite. Just embed CPython and route it through that; given that they are struggling to match the Javascript performance of V8 it seems they might welcome a free diversion. Chrome following suite is more questionable. V8 is the current king of the ring in JS performance, but Google is widely known to be a supporter of Python. I can imagine them amiable to the idea of unifying their server side glue with the client. Besides; they have shown time and time again to make 'strategically strange' moves in order to help advance the general state of the internet. When it comes to google if the internet wins, they win. Opera would be wise to support it as a differentiating feature. They need all the tricks they can pull to stay relevant. The bugaboo to me is Apple. They have Nitro, which is right up with V8 in most benchmarks, and support for languages which have benevolent dictators living in their enemy's quarters doesn't sound like an Appleish thing to do. I doubt they would peacefully hand over any control. Of course if we do stumble into a multi-client-side-language-choice Renaissance it will be Adobe with the most to lose.
- mitjak 16y agoBundling as standard your own proprietary plugin which you know no one else will bundle is definitely not pushing innovation, and is little different from ActiveX, DirectShow filters, VBScript and the rest.
- alnayyir 16y agoDear god, this, yes.
- Raphael_Amiard 16y agoWell my first reaction is the same as yours, but since python is OSS the possibility does indeed exist that this could be emulated amongst other browsers without needing Silverlight. The runtime API they present to python though, while it seems to be just the DOM exposed, would still need to be documented and standardized.
- Goosey 16y agoBut IronPython is FOSS. The fact that it is being bundled in a closed source plugin seems like an implementation detail to me. If Firefox wanted to they could expose this very same implementation of a python runtime engine.
- philwelch 16y agoI bet Apple would try to embed Ruby ;)
- imurray 16y agoJust embed CPython... I imagine that, from a security standpoint, embeding CPython in a browser would be pretty hairy.
- rwhitman 16y agoI would say that Microsoft 'pushing innovation on the browser front' is the root cause of most browser related developer headaches over the last 10 years.
- Twisol 16y agoI definitely wish the page had been more up-front about requiring Silverlight. I paged down for more than I'd have liked just to find an answer to the nagging question of "how is it done?"