Probably a dumb question

[Alex Martelli]

Aahz Maruch <aahz at netcom.com> wrote in message
news:8hr23k$bvk$1 at nntp9.atl.mindspring.net...
> In article <394106F9.A58F87CE at micron.net>,
> Peter Immarco  <android at micron.net> wrote:
> >
> >Hi,  still waiting for my two books on Python from Amazon.  I know
> >Python is a full programming language so it can be used on web servers
> >for server side processing, but what about browser side processing?  Can
> >I also use it to create an 'applet' that runs in a compatible browser?
> >I'm guessing not likely because I don't think IE4+ or Netscape
> >Communicator support Python but I'm hoping I'm wrong.
>
> There's a rumor that a future version of Mozilla will have Python
> support (supposedly they're building in something similar to ASP with
> its switchable scripting engines).  Other than that, no.

If Python is installed (as an Active Scripting compliant language) on
the client machine running the browser, it will be usable as the
scripting language (just like any other Active Scripting compliant
language would be) from Internet Explorer (4 and later, at least).

See Hammond and Robinson's "Python Programming on Win32", O'Reilly.

This is not very useful for the general case (since you don't know
whether the client machine does have Python installed, etc, etc),
but it can come in handy on an intranet (where you do have some
degree of control on what's installed client-side).


Alex