[blar]

Apologies for going off-topic, but why ISN'T that an option now? Was that not the point of "type" in <script> in the first place? (That's a genuine question; I don't know the history of the <script> tag, or its "type" attribute.

How is V8 wired into Chrome, or Rhino(?) into Firefox, for example? Is there a great technical barrier to making it possible for the user to install an interpreter of their choice? As I understand the course of the browser's history, it already seems to be moving to an OS-style program (or, in Chrome's case, it has BECOME an OS), so it seems like user-loaded language runtimes OUGHT to be on SOMEONE'S mind. And I'd be surprised if it hasn't already occurred to someone before, I just don't know the history.

Has anyone attempted to write a browser that allowed for such a thing? Or has JS just been the accepted scripting language, and no one has yet tried to push past?

[krapp]

IIRC, Microsoft tried to get vbscript to catch on, but it didn't. I think it was a case of one language doing the trick adequately, and adding more would just multiply the headaches for development and building cross-browser compatible code. What happens when Firefox supports Python 3, Microsoft supports Python 2 (but not actual python 2, their own proprietary version) and Opera just happens to only ever run javascript?