All frontend languages/solutions

Question

Are these all the languages/solutions you could use in frontend?

• javascript+html+css
• flash
• java
• silverlight (c#, ruby, python etc)

And what is a plugin for Safari and Firefox written in? Is it low-level languages like C++?

Answer 1

firefox: How to create extensions for firefox

plugins for chrome, you can write those in simple Html, javascript

Answer 2

Simply put (and as you probably well aware), and to use the long-standing terminology, there are two sides to a (say, web) experience, the client and the server:

1. Any language that can run without a call to the web server in the client (i.e. the web browser) is client-side (Javascript is the obvious example);

2. a language that runs on the server, but produces content that the client can request, is server-side (Ruby, Python, Perl, etc.)

Plugins like Flash or Silverlight are a separate case. Although themselves written in languages functioning at a lower-level than client-side scripts, they nevertheless operate in a client browser with the plugin, and - once loaded - Actionscript (say) will run in the browser, client-side.

To complicate matters, HTML and Javascript can be used to write (e.g.) OS X widgets and Browser plugins and - although they may call on server functions for (say) data - they're still client-side.

Further, the ability of HTML5 to store data, and the rise of NoSQL solutions, mean that the division is no longer as clear-cut as it once was.

Answer 3

FireFox plugins use XUL, https://developer.mozilla.org/En/XUL, HTML, JavaScript and CSS;they are called chrome applications. In fact the browser itself is a chrome application. It also uses XPCOM for some things, https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XPCOM. From that link "XPCOM components be used and implemented in JavaScript, Java, and Python in addition to C++".

And if your curious, Microsoft's XAML was pretty much taken from XUL.

As far as I know for plugins in Safari/Chrome and other non-IE, they just use HTML, JavaScript CSS. For IE plugins, check this out, http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?design.4.423268.5