Plugin Availability For Non-x86 Browsers?

Foredecker writes: "Many, many Internet appliances are being built with non-x86 processors such as Mips, ARM and PowerPC. Supposedly, one of the barriers to using such processors in Internet appliances is the notion that x86 has, by far, the advantage that many popular browser plug-ins are only available for x86. If they are available for non-x86 systems, then they are either available late (x86 first) or their are inferior to their x86 brethren. Is this a problem? Is it true? If it is true, is this going to make it harder for non-x86 based Internet appliances to win acceptance in the market?" Earlier this year, we talked about how the Web is now flooded with non-HTML content. Now I don't mind enhancing one's Web experience, but it would be nice if the folks who make these plug-ins realize that the Web is not only for those folks running Wintel or Macintosh systems. When will plug-in makers realize that there is a larger market out there who may also be interested in their product?

Comments

Nobody cares about non Windows/Apple

[guran]

Hey folks. This is not meant as a troll OK?

Last time I checked some statistics, the various variants of Windows ran 95% of the browsers, Mac 4% and "Others" one single percent. Thats Linux, Solaris, BSD etc combined!

This means that unless you are specifically targeting the slashdot crowd, you have no reason to care wether your pages work outside the Windows/Mac world.
Most clueful webfolks stay away from the plugins anyway, since they add more maintenance cost to your site then they are worth. Nobody cares wether that single percent can view the site or not. If they can, its a bonus, if not: their problem.

OTOH

[Spud Zeppelin]

As someone who used to be involved with producing a plugin for a particular alternate image file format, I can honestly say there are several issues associated with trying to produce and maintain plugins for multiple platforms -- not the least of which is maintainability and keeping them all current. Add to that the hardware costs of releasing a binary for linux-libc6-strongARM and every other os/hardware combination you can come up with, and you wind up with exactly the same cost-benefit analysis situation you do when producing any other proprietary software. We were among the best in terms of cross-platform support at our peak (fall '96), with:

• Win 3.1
  
• Win 95/NT
  
• Mac 68k
  
• Mac PPC
  
• Sparc Solaris 2.4
  
• Digital Unix 3.2
  

all as supported platforms, but invariably there'd either be somebody grumbling about the fact that the "latest" version wasn't out for Solaris yet (hey, at least we had one), or "can you make one for Irix?" or whatever; the fact remains, most plugins are made by small companies who are doing the best they can with the resources they have to support the most people.

Don't chime in about open-sourcing the codec either: compression codecs are exactly one of the r&d-intensive products for which retaining closed-source is the only viable revenue model that ESR talks about in "The Magic Cauldron." If the only thing you have of value is your algorithm, you really can't distribute source that everyone can implement.

The point is, there is no good solution: if you are building a site that contains essential content, don't use non-standard technologies (I'd argue this includes Java applets). Conversely, if you're not using the same technology as 80% of the people out there, and I too am in that outer 20%, prepare to fall victim to the 80-20 rule when vendors of everything, including browser plugins, do cost-benefit analysis.

MOO;IANAL.