Our roadmap for the next 2 releases

Our next 2 releases will prioritise the implementation of PyXPCOM within the eXe code engine. This will be of considerable interest to developers, but educators will not necessarily see significant changes in the interface. For example, we are not planning to add new iDevices over the next 2 releases (but many more will follow later in the project). The purpose of this note is to explain why we are doing this, in the spirit of the openness of our project.

Why bother with PyXPCOM?

We are using the Mozilla framework extensively in the eXe project. Mozilla is much more than just a browser - it is a software framework that allows you to build desktop software applications (If you're interested have a look at the summary of the Mozilla application framework or alternatively The Many Faces of Mozilla in the Linux Journal). The Mozilla framework gives us a very solid foundation for extensibility of eXe in the future.

We are using Python as our programing language of choice. Without getting technical, we need a way for the Python code of eXe to "talk" with the Mozilla framework more effectively. (At the moment we're using a small localhost web server to do this - but this solution has a number of disadvantages.) PyXPCOM is the way we can get eXe code engine to talk with the Mozilla framework in a more effective way without the need for a web server.

What are the advantages of the PyXPCOM solution for eXe?

By working on PyXPCOM in eXe we anticipate the following advantages:

• Significant increase in the speed of development for adding new features to the program - so many more iDevices will be possible :-).
• eXe will become more stable than currently the case;
• eXe will run faster, especially when editing large and complicated idevices;
• We will be able to have copy and paste (for images etc.);
• Implement drag and drop of files from the desktop for loading and importing images and text into the eXe authoring environment;
• Users will be able to save files in non ascii languages (like chinese) on Windows (unicode characters);
• Users will be able to run firefox at the same time as exe without the developers having to do anything tricky.
• Increased security as the eXe application will be just an application and your browser will be just a browser.

In the medium term this will add more value to the tool, so we hope the educators will bear with us for the next 6 - 8 weeks.