- From: Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>
- Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2005 14:43:38 +0200
On Jan 1, 2005, at 20:13, Bill McCoy wrote: > 4. This is only indirectly covered in the spec, but the assumption > that the > spec should not dictate a plug-in based implementation for Internet > Explorer > is difficult to understand, ... > And the model for users to grant one-time permission to install a > trusted plug-in is well-understood and there are examples of > widely-adopted > commercial-grade plug-ins to Internet Explorer (e.g. Macromedia Flash, > Adobe > Reader). Macromedia Flash is a special case. The existence of a special case does not prove anything about the general feasibility of plug-in-based solutions. The installed base was built by aggressive bundling. The Adobe Reader PDF plug-in is not a good example of the willingness of the users to install plug-ins, either. Virtually everyone needs a PDF viewer. Whereas Gnome, KDE and Mac OS X users get a PDF viewer with a platform-consistent UI with the platform distribution, Windows users do not have a viable alternative to Adobe Reader. The fact that the installer of the de facto must-have standalone PDF viewer for Windows installs an ActiveX control for IE as a side effect does not prove anything about the general willingness of users to install plug-ins. -- Henri Sivonen hsivonen at iki.fi http://iki.fi/hsivonen/
Received on Sunday, 2 January 2005 04:43:38 UTC