Can I write browser plugins with Python?

Question

Hi,

I'm thinking about writing a browser plugin, but I don't know any C. Can I write browser plugins with Java or Python?

I was thinking... All those websites store cookies on my browser to identify me. If I wrote a plugin that would supply a browser GUID in the http headers, webservers could identify the browser.

I think that would rule out the need for 99% of all the cookies, pretending for a moment that all users and servers use it.

Answer 1

You can certainly write an ActiveX plugin for IE in Python using the win32com interfaces. But you'd have to install Python and pywin32 along with your plugin for it to work, so it'd be pretty bulky. I don't think it's going to be popular to install all that just to get a GUID.

(Actually most people specifically don't want a GUID. Is that really your only aim? If you're thinking about single-sign-on options, look at systems like OpenID as used on SO... this gives the user much greater control.)