| Areas | ??? |
| Good if student knows | C/C++, FF internals |
| Priority | ??? |
| Difficulty | medium-hard (but still an excellent project) |
| Benefits to the student | A future in FF and Tcl hacking |
| Benefits to Tcl | Getting a foot-hold in web-applications |
| Mentor | Colin McCormack |
Firefox has recently been extended to permit scripts in languages other than JavaScript to appear in <script> and to evaluate them. These scripts provide access to the DOM. Production of an XPI installable module which links FireFox scripting to a Tcl interpreter would be a beneficial project. Addition and rehabilitation of the tcl xpcom interface package would complete the package.
Two levels - Tcl and Firefox. Firefox level hacking is a commercially valuable skill. FF community has a lot of hot C/C++ people. Firefox has a long future. Tcl is great :) Putting the two together could spark a lot of activity.
Web applications have a great future - shame about the JavaScript. I think the ability to manipulate the DOM from Tcl would immediately enable a wide range of applications due to Tcl's greater maturity and facility compared to JavaScript. This would benefit Tcl by increasing exposure (it would bear the same relationship to Tcl as Tk does, but in a whole new field.) I daresay it might also benefit the broader community, by bringing Tcl into this field.
WJG This is an excellent proposal. Tcl is a great scripting language and the fruit of this project would, I'm sure, be worth the effort.
AMG: How does this relate to the Tcl/Tk plugin?
firetcl: https://sourceforge.net/projects/firetcl/ is a project in this direction
ttt: I do not see the benefits. Accessing and manipulating the DOM is not the strength of tcl. Working with DOM-Manipulation implies: the HMI is based on HTML - so tk also is not the enabler at this point. JavaScript is a bit ugly - OK. But it's built-in you are more platform independent and in modern browsers its fast. Modern development tools can translate to JavaScript - you can avoid its ugliness. Using Tcl means just adding a language to a problem?