[danaliv]

Yeah, this is all marketing/partnership fluff. I'd be much more interested in seeing flame wars from Usenet. :) I was programming back then but I don't remember what the sentiment was at the time. I just remember Microsoft insisting on calling it "JScript" or "ActiveScript" or something because they didn't want to give Java any mindshare over ActiveX.

[jasonhansel]

Yep. IE went so far as to add support for VBScript (a language based on visual basic) to compete.

[Avamander]

I now wish there'd be actual Python on the web.

[badsectoracula]

I haven't tested it and it might not work in a recent IE, but at least at the past IE used ActiveScript so any ActiveScript language could be used. Python can be installed as an ActiveScript engine and used via IE.

The same applies with other languages too (e.g. Perl, Ruby, etc).