standard for browser assisted plugin installation

Hi everyone,

We've been talking about this issue with regards to Firefox 3:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=425013
and Boris Zbarsky suggested that we get some of your input on this situation.

Basically, the problem is that there's no standard way to trigger
browser assisted plugin installation.  This affects flash, java, svg,
and possible other future web technologies.

I think when this was discussed a while back, the response was simply:
object's got fallback capability, just use that.  However, since then,
every major browser (except maybe Safari) has implemented some sort of
browser assisted plugin installation.  The one major benefit of
implementing this in the browser is that the browser doesn't have to
be restarted, so the user doesn't have to leave the site that
initiated the installation.

So, it'd be nice if there was some sort of standard way of telling the
browser to install the appropriate plugin.  The standard way might be
as simple as having the browser take the mime-type and do something
with that.  If that's the case, a few lines in the standard suggesting
this as the best way to handle the situation would go a long way in
helping developers avoid a lot of complicated javascript to deal with
this problem.

Thanks for your time,
Yi

Received on Wednesday, 26 March 2008 14:09:12 UTC