Some websites have web-based apps that you need to "install" in some way when you visit the site if you want to use them. I'm thinking in particular of TrendMicro's "Housecall" antivirus, and also McAfee's Antivirus installer program.

I don't fully understand how these apps work -- it seems as if they rely on the browser in some way, rather than being standalone apps. (If anyone would illuminate me as to how these work under-the-hood, it'd be appreciated.)

If my users are running Firefox on GNU/Linux, and I want to give them web-based apps like the 2 described above -- and if I don't want to make force them to install Java -- what are the alternatives?

There aren't any that I know of.

IE developers have ActiveX and everyone else has Java.

Ok sigsegv, maybe I'm thinking of this wrong then.

How about this instead: is there a way to provide, say, a Python/Tkinter script in such a way that, when a user comes to my website and clicks on a given link, the python/tk script is downloaded to their ~/temp directory (well, after asking permission of course) and then run from there?

The idea being, I don't want to make my user have to download a program, find out where they downloaded it to, and then run it from a command line. That is, if I could get my non-tech brother to use a GNU/Linux box, I'd like for him to be able to go to my website, click on a link, and get to automatically try out my latest Python/Tkinter script. Is there a way to do *that*?

Hmm,.. I'm thinking that a Mozilla Firefox "extension" might be just the thing... Looking into it.