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Konqueror Supporting ActiveX
brunes69 notes that you can read the news that konqueror is supporting ActiveX. I saw it being done at at LinuxTag (as well as wine running The Sims!) so its coming. This ought to do a lot to give Linux users compatibility on sites the force shockwave or other obnoxious activex plug-ins.
Does this mean, activex security holes now work on Linux too?
Let's see what Code Weavers did - they emulated the part to run Windows version Netscape plugins. Meaning - if you install a player/plugin which supports Netscape (like all of them *currently* do) - then you'll be able to use it under Netscape, Mozilla and Konqueror (with Konqueror's Netscape plugin support). The whole thing will be just a Linux Netscape plugin. Now - 2 things: A. they released it for embedded devices, and it costs the developer money. B. It only supports those players who supports Netscape plugins. They will release a Desktop version later this year if I understood correctly. Now - let's see what Malte and Niko (the reaktivate guys) did:
The reaktivate idea is quite simple - a small layer added in higher priority to nsplugins layer in Konqueror. Now - when an app wants to install ActiveX, wine will run and the application will things this is Windows and MSIE, so it's kosher to install ActiveX. Then Reaktivate will download the ActiveX, asks the user premission to install and installs it on the wine [you don't need any windows DLL's - one of the authors doesn't have any windows installation at all - so he's making it sure the Reaktivate development can be run without any windows stuff needed - so fake Windows directory which wine can create is enough). Now - regarding the security - I understood that they'll add layer of protection, and probably the signature check for any ActiveX before installation. Add to that the your actives will run CHRoot, and as a user (not root), then you got a pretty good protection. The Reaktivate way will let you install new plugins in case the software house decides that Netscape plugin is not necessary because of a very small browser market [for example]
Hetz (Heunique)
Actually - the problem is pretty simple:
Run your VMWare (if you have it on your machine) with Windows - or reboot to Windows.
Now install the Quicktime player - it doesn't matter which components (minimal is ok)
After it'll finish - watch the new widgets on the Quicktime windows - they are totally different - and thats what today Wine is not supporting...
If there was a way to run the Quicktime player without those widgets (with standard widgets) - then you could run QuickTime under Wine...
Hetz (Heunique)
that is mostly true; it depends on that first part, which is getting wine to emulate an i386 for you. At the moment this is almost nonexistent (listed at 5%, no serious effort, from the Wine Status page).
However, if it ever is, then Wine will end up being a modern replacement for tools like Wabi (which was very cool at the time) instead of just a toy/tool for us Intel users.
Until then, there's always Bochs, at least, but that's pretty slow; Plex86 is not quite ready for prime time, and DOSEmu doesn't have that much support for i386 emulation, but more than Wine does...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
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The khtml hackers are very concerned with standards compliance. Feed Konqueror 100% standard compliance code and it should do exactly what you want, it it does not, please file a bug report.
Supporting a non-standard feature doesn't necessarily break standard compliance. Even Mozilla has plenty of workarounds for broken pages (uncloses table/td/tr's etcetera) which make it more useable.
Nah. Those are what Windows programmers call "owner-draw", meaning Quicktime draws them instead of relying on Win32 widgets. So they're not an issue for Wine. Anyway, bleeding-edge Wine CVS just had patches submitted that allows QT5 to play (in full-screen mode, windowed is being worked on).
Flash is not Shockwave. Flash is one of several Macromedia technologies under the Shockwave brand. However, when developers and designers refer to Shockwave, they almost always mean Director Shockwave, for which there most certainly isn't Linux or Unix support of any kind. Nor would I expect it soon unless AOL pays Macromedia to develop it for the appliance market. Director is complex stuff.
The Mozilla steering committee may never support proprietary technologies (other than, say, Java), but you can bet your sweet patootie that AOL has no such reservations when it comes to official Netscape browser releases.
If a decent sandboxing solution comes along and the most popular public ActiveX controls without native Linux equivalents work well under it, I'd expect ActiveX to turn up in the Linux appliance version of the Netscape browser in short order... unless their lawyers determine that Microsoft's restrictions that prohibit use of any of their DLLs bundled with an ActiveX control on non-Windows OSes opens them to risk. Whether the Mozilla CVS maintainers choose to merge it into their trunk is another story, but the Mozilla team clearly doesn't care whether or not anyone wants to use their browser. They're happy to treat it like an academic project. How else can XUL be explained? Any developer that cares about user experience would have wrapped Mozilla/Netscape 6 in native UI frontends a long time ago, as the Galeon folks and others have, and let XUL wait for hardware to catch up with its processing needs.
And plugins are utterly nasty to install under Unixes, and not much better under Windows and MacOS, what with no systemwide plugin directory. It's high time AOL hired a goddamn tech evangelist to make the rounds to Macromedia, Real, Adobe and other major plugin providers to help them package their plugins as XPI autoinstallers like first-party Mozilla/Netscape 6 components already are, so that installation can be made as easy and fluid as ActiveX.
The guy/gal plagiarized from something apparently written in 1997 (copying up until the guys name), so don't expect anything modern in there.
Flash content is currently viewable by more net users than Java is This is why you are starting to see Flash ads all over the place...
That in my book is the most compelling reason to disable flash, and plugins in general: vastly improved signal to noise ratio.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
You'd hit a larger target market if you used Mozilla's "Install This Plug-in" feature, which is pretty much just like ActiveX except without the crypto sigs.
.001" on Freshmeat and just put rm -rf / in the makefile.
The nice thing is since Mozilla is nice friendly open source tech, it will be easier to socially engineer them into installing as root.
On the other hand, it would probably easier to put up "PornSlurper 2000
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
"Other than Quicktime, not that many internet sites actually use ActiveX controls"
QuickTime is not an ActiveX control -- it's a Netscape-compatible plug-in that is supported by IE.
BTW, I heard that IE6 has dropped the NS-plugin interface. Any beta testers willing to confirm or deny?
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Maybe we need to make the open source browsers be more configurable to lie about their browser/OS string? Its not completely without precendent, since IE at least used to have "Mozilla" in their string to fool site recognition. A really cool ability might be to let a user specify browser strings on a per-URL basis and remember the setting for future visits... If web developers found out that a large percentage of their visitors were lying with their browser string then maybe they'd be more incentified to build sites that work for more people? On the other hand, they might take it that there were less people using other platforms because fewer people would be turned away... Hmm...
That's all well and good, but...
Konqueror is not Linux. KDE/Konqueror runs on any POSIX/X11 system, and work is being done to get it on systems without those.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I don't think people are seeing the big picture here. ActiveX is more that just a crappy web technology. OLE2 (ActiveX) is the really what Javabeans are to Java. Wine cant (until now?) run software built with OLE2 components. If I understand correctly, this opens the door to Linux running tons of modern Windows software.
-Scott scott@surrealistic.org
Point is, no, there are some radicals out there who insist on using 100% Free Software, and I can see that POV, but I think there are a number of folks who don't mind paying good money for good produce. Personally, I get ticked at people who try to enforce a monopoly on me. On the other hand, I'm also about to throw Netscape off my box, frankly because it sucks and there's better stuff (Mozilla, Galeon, Konqueror) out there, and the number of sites that need the Real True Netscape is fast approaching zero. (It may be zero alreddie, I just haven't confirmed that to my satisfaction yet.)
Don't make me subscribe, don't force-bundle software on me, particularly if it sucks, don't cost me an arm and a leg (Photoshop), I'm happy.
--
These are my ideas, you can't have them
I believe the Codeweavers Netscape Windows plug-in bridge (also Wine-based) allows the use of Quicktime plug-ins. I tried to check on this but the Codeweavers web site seems to be down right now. This would probably be a safer and more secure way than using an ActiveX control
I encourage you to give it a whirl. Perhaps you could start from the "bloated" codebase you so despise and trim from there.
:)
I like konqueror, don't get me wrong. But it still has huge issues with some things. And I'd fix it, but I don't have the self-discipline to wade through other people's code and figure out exactly what it's doing. I just don't work well that way.
Once you release your version of the browser that does as little as possible, I hope you won't mind if people bitch about it.
People bitch about things that I do all the time. I take their bitching without complaining, and if they have a valid point I make note of it and try to fix their objections. It's all part of being an open source developer. But I'm allowed to be the bitcher as opposed to the bitchee every once in awhile, aren't I?
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No-one said you have to use it. It's a separate plugin. Do you have to use _all_ the Netscape plugins in order to use Netscape?
I know, but how about fixing Konqueror first? Konq's getting quite good, but it still has huge issues, especially with Javascript and font handling. And hell, recent Mozilla builds even beat it in terms of speed (compared to Konq 2.1.2)!
'course I probably shouldn't talk until I try 2.2, but since I'm on dialup, I'm gonna wait until it's out of beta (or at least in FreeBSD's ports so I can just set it going and come back later)
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Here's my set up:
Wine version: 0.0.20010510-3
WMP version: 6.01.05.0217 (stock w/ Win98, may be SE. I don't boot into it, only use it for wine).
on a Debian 2.2 (unstable) system.
The only libraries that are "native" instead of "builtin" are "mciavi.drv" and "mcianim.drv". I don't think that I customized this setup very much.
I generally have to run it as root, which SUCKS, IMHO. Other than that, most stuff works for me, except the "favorites" menu and I haven't tried to upgrade it. But hitting a URL or watching a dl'd movie are both fine. I don't use it very much, so I can't say that I've tested it extensively...
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
... after which we can run nearly all the windows security holes directly on linux! I can't wait!
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
Sure, this may provide a lot of convenience, but I've noticed as of late a few things setting and following dangerous precedents. For one, playback of avi, asf, and wmv files. Many of these nowadays use codecs for audio or sound that have no native implementation. Projects like avifile and mplayer work around this by using the win32 files. This provides really nice functionality, but discourages many who would work on native solutions, as this solution seems 'good enough'. Of course this means that non-x86 systems are completely out of luck, and that even while in linux we can still be tied to Microsoft binaries....
I think the same can apply to ActiveX through wine, and to some extent wine in general. So far it hasn't worked well enough to make people see it as a 'good enough' solution, but as it gets more complete, developers are going to get lazier about implementing native equivalents, as has happened with those multimedia codecs..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
USR tried to corner the market. Unfortunately, modem markets aren't easy to corner, because 1) people don't upgrade modems much, and 2) it's easy for competitors to fully duplicate the technology.
On the other hand, Microsoft will leverage its desktop monopoly </CLICHE> to lock people into its commodity formats. People upgrade Windows or Office or IE fairly regularly, and it's easy for MS to invent protocols that are difficult to duplicate, and easy to break support for competitors' products if they start getting dangerous.
Looking at the USR example, it would seem that the only way MS can be brought down is by other operating systems fully duplicating Windows, and then providing added benifits. But with billions of dollars a year going into obfuscating every protocol they can get their hands on, this goal still seems a long way off. A quote from the Samba 2.2 (recently released) docs has stuck in my mind: they're proud to have finally got DOS wildcard matching working the same as DOS does! (after how many years?)
You or I may find Windows-matching futile, and prefer the strategy of enhancing Linux's strengths to grab new customers, but we shouldn't begrudge anybody else the change to try and beat Windows on their own turf.
Um, that's the link in the story, and it's Slashdotted. Looks like kde.org can't handle a bit of load? Maybe if they didn't run a gui on their webservers ;)
I never quite understood Slashdotting: you ought to get through at least some of the time to the URLs, even if slow; unless the actual server in question has crashed under load (which is quite unacceptable)
Ummm...
Have you taken a serious look at the W3C standard for CSS2?
It does contain several references for things such as page breaks (page-break-before, page-break-after, etc) and also for elements which should be printed on every page, e.g. headers and footers.
I used to think that these features were lacking and valid reasons to not use XHTML1+CSS2 for word processing, but they aren't. I have, as before stated, yet to find a valid reason why XHTML is not a decent word processor format.
If we can all agree on ONE flavor of XML, then then stuff like Microsoft Office will become a commodity...
That's the problem. XML is not the proper answer, because XML happens to be a "language definition language". Your post makes as much sense as saying "Let's use SGML as the standard web page language!" Which sounds almost feasible until you realize that SGML is a tool used to *define* standards like HTML, which can then be used as standard languages.
My vote for a standard word processing language actually would be XHTML1+CSS2. I can't name any features off-hand that I would ever use in a word processor that can't be done in XHTML with CSS... but I'm hoping someone out there can prove me wrong and show me why I'm an idiot. : )
-chris
Will Konqueror conceivably run the Windows Terminal server client?
That would be pretty cool.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
There's nothing wrong with doing your own thing, but when people ask, "Why should I switch from Windows to Linux?" they want to be able to see that they can do everything in Linux that they could in Windows, but better. There are lots of things that I use that don't emulate the Windows equivalent, like an email client. Compare Mutt and Outlook Express - they're worlds apart. On the other hand you need compatibility because of "standards" that have been imposed by Microsoft's dominance in the software market. I want to be able to use Excel spreadsheets in Linux and I want to do so in a way with which I'm familiar.
Lots of Linux software packages are, as you put it, "a poor imitation." I want a great imitation. I want all the features of Microsoft software without the bugs and frivolous add-ons and license agreements. There are certain Linux applications that I like better than the Windows equivalent (GAIM is one even using TOC, but would certainly be far superior if Oscar was still permitted). I like cdrecord and cdparanoia. I like NFS better than Windows Shares. LFTP rules. But when I need to type a formal document or do some browsing on a bloated website, I'm tempted to boot to Windows.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
Codeweavers Crossover (another WINE project) is running both Quicktime and ActiveX and is produced as a regular netscape compatible plugin which has been tested on Konqueror, as well as Mozilla and the various Netscape releases. Codeweavers are selling and supporting it right now, and releasing it Open Source in a couple of months time.
:)
Still, that's no reason to stop writing to Apple. In fact, if they did a port, I'd start writing letters to sites using WMP telling them they should offer Quicktime.
Even though I give him shit for not taking the time to support a still prominent browser (ns 4.x), I applaud him for not putting a big "you suck, get a new browser and use windows and ie" sign up for all non ie5 users.
I have this exact message on my blog. Do you know why? Because the W3C published the HTML4 and CSS1 standards EONS ago!
The only reason why people don't bother to update their browsers is because no one is making them! If sites continue to support NS4, people will continue using it - and that makes the standards that were developed by the W3C absolutely useless.
So stop whining about 'lack of NS4' support and get a modern standards compliant browser!
</rant>
*grin*
PS> I'm not usually like this, but the 'web platform' sucks. We need to fix its current state of stagnation. Let's go!
----- rL
Now, what needs to happen is for it to emulate/support/implement the standards for desktop applications, which, as much as we hate to admit it, are mostly owned by Microsoft. Suggesting to someone that they create yet more "standards" for browser plug-ins or document file formats makes no sense.
I can't really use Linux at work, because it doesn't support very many desktop application standards. I can't open many office documents (and Star Office cannot be relied upon to open all documents, plus it's incredibly slow on a PIII800/512M!!!), nor can I read HTML email consistently, nor can I easily and consistently deal with attachments.
ActiveX isn't a big deal, because not many sites use it, but our intranet application, for example, does make good use of it, and my ability to use our intranet is limited on Linux.
The alternatives Linux provides are implementations of standards, not in alternatives to the standards themselves.
http://www.naildrivin5.com/davec
How is the Intel-compatible platform a monopoly? There are other companies producing x86 compatible chips, aren't there? (Just as it's not the Windows platform that's the monopoly but the product-- that's why WINE isn't collusion with the "enemy".)
my plan
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
An OS with a very fragmented 5%(10%?,15%? it wold change nothing) percent of the desktop users cannot 'embrace and extend' a single-owned OS with > 70 % of desktop users.
And I don't think anybody is trying this. What they are trying is a more subtle tactic (maybe not even done at conscious level) called infiltration. Porting open-source apps to the other platform. Augmenting interoperability (document filters, plugins, ... ). Blending MS technologies on an Unix-like OS. Until there will be no more reason to not to use Linux or *BSD as desktop.
Unfortunately, it works both ways. There is a serious risk that OSS loose some of their 'design purity' (if you believe that) in the process. here will be less implementation of Good Things (tm) and more Reasonable Compromises
But no cry. This is in the nature of engineering.
And until everybody may have the sources of anything developed, there will be enough developers using their free time to implement the Good Thing, for the sake of Software Well Done.
/SAGA_MODE OFF
I hope.
Ciao
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FB
If you want Windows plugins, Windows ActiveX controls, and Windows (DirectX) games, just run Windows! I do not understand why the people who want these things switched to Linux in the first place!
This means ActiveX is pretty limited and next to useless in Konq. It's a kewl feature and handy for shockwave, but that's about it.
BTW you can run ActiveX controls in Mozilla or Netscape (on Win32) if you want but you're still face the same limitations.
Shockwave is the web player for movies created in Macromedia Director, which is bitmap based. Flash is created in the Flash authoring environment, which is vector base. Flash was made for the web, while Shockwave was made to be able to play Director movies on the web.
Flash runs as an activeX control under Windows IE only. On all other platforms you have to use the netscape plugin. That plugin is available for PC, Mac, and Linux. The Shockwave plugin only works on PC and Mac. MM never ported it to Linux.
Flash is a *vector* format stored in binary form. This makes it *tiny*. If you know what you are doing you can do an insane amount in less than 20k.
This is why you are starting to see Flash ads all over the place...
A|Q|U|A
At the moment, 16 different strings are supported ranging from Lynx over MSIE (various versions) till wget.
I used it, it works flawlessly.
I did buy the official linux quake3 from the shelf at Fry's, only days after it appeared. I spend "lots of time"... well, about two evenings, of installing various Mesa, libgart, kernels, Xfree versions, etc. In the end, I played it for a few hours at the lowest resolution and lowest quality and the 'bots kicked my ass. I was truely impressed by the visual quality of the high quality settings, but I never did manage to get more than a few frames per second on my matrox g400 (selected specifically because of matrox's good disclosure to the xfree team).
JohnZed does have a good point, that "we" suggests involvement as a developer in the project. As my own little (non-game) project has been building up a user base, I see a lot of users with strong opinions about development. It's easy to brush them off as "back seat drivers" or "armchair critics", but sometimes, some of them actually write a bit of code and get involved in the project... and it's hard to predict which ones those will be.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
There is a principle, buried deep at the core of the Internet standards process, that reads:
This, too, is one of the basic qualities of free software. By following this simple principle, robustness and interopability are maximized. This is one of the things that make free software so wonderful. It tends to be made modular, and people just add plugins for whatever new functionality they need.
Java? sure.
Tcl? sure.
Shockwave? sure.
Flash? sure.
ActiveX? sure.
Any other language? write a simple little plugin yourself :-P
GNU/Linux can be both an alternative, as well as a superior implementation.
-- Agthorr
Following the KDE naming convention, the obvious name for this has to be ...
... wait for it ...
KraptiveX
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Set the power button suspend, not power-down You can do it on an Asus P2B motherboard every easily, probably on many others.
Configure the Linux kernel APM support to ignore user suspend.
Problem solved. Very few people know about the 4 second override shutdown or that there still is a switch in the back. (Those that do, hopefully will be clueful enough not to "helpfully" power off your PC.)
Except now, the user may run away screaming from the room, saying your computer is possessed by demons.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Even if lots of companies made them, consumers choice would still be restricted and that was what I meant by a monopoly. With just one viable architecture, the world would be denied access to potentialy useful inovations which broke compatibility. Examples....
At the end of the day I want a choice of OS and a choice of architecture. Perhaps I am wierd.
We already have that. It's called mozilla-bin.
Free software is a movement - a community. We (and I can say "we") don't exist to create something wonderful for someone else (you), we exist to create something wonderful for ourselves and our peers.
I recently started writing my own text editor. I know there are a thousand text editors out there - I didn't like any of them. So my text editor will (when finished) do exactly what I want, how I want, no more and no less. If others want to use it, they are Free to. If they don't, that's fine. If they want to change something, they can do it themselves - that's why they have the source - not beg me to do it.
wishus
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
, I heard that IE6 has dropped the NS-plugin interface
...extinguish.... ahhhh M$ at its best. Now it cuts off the airsupply...
I smell an Open Source GPL'd grassroots project in the making!
LFS. Have you built your system today?
Hopefully, before this feature gets released into mainstream Konqueror versions, they'll have developed some way of sandboxing ActiveX code so that it can't cause any damage on the system.
This will probably be most useful for corporate users where their company's intranet sites have lots of ActiveX controls. Other than Quicktime, not that many internet sites actually use ActiveX controls.
No, ActiveX started out as "Object Linking and Embedding" back in the early Windows days. Microsoft greatly expanded it, and changed the name to activeX.
ActiveX is really just a specification for binary compatibility between objects, programs, and the OS across any language. If you support the standard interfaces and binary types, ActiveX doesn't care what language you wrote that in or how things are arranged behind the scenes. In other words, it is a well-defined contract between clients and servers, with the servers being just about anything and the clients being pieces of code that provide a service.
ActiveX is why I can buy any one of thousands of OCXes or DLLs already prebuilt to do one thing or another, then instantiate them from VC++, VB, Java, scripts, et al and use them with great ease.
When you think about it, the concept of embedding an ActiveX control in a page isn't that radical. If I already have written an OCX that does THingX, and I wanna do that in my page, why not just tell the page to load the OCX? At least from Microsoft's thinking. Otherwise, I have to write a separate plugin that does ThingX, thus wasting my time.
I find programming on the Windows side infinitely easier in part due to ActiveX. If I want to write a code editor with color syntax highlighting, I can spend a lot of time writing and debugging it myself, or I can just buy one of the many OCXes already out there for that purpose, or download one of the many projects that are open source.
-- russ
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
I'm very impressed with the entire KDE desktop.
And Konquerer is great.
This is one step closer to be being able to provide Linux to my customers.
Bush's education improvements were
Seriously, Scott, if they can use OLE2 (ActiveX) then Wine could be fortified and noone would use that cheap hooch we call Windows to play games on or run other software.
And then what would Bill G do with all his plans for world domination?
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Linux ports of games just don't sell very well at this point; Linux-only games don't sell at all. What is the solution? Embrace and extend.
Consider this: If you can buy Windows for $150 or you can download a Linux distro that runs all your Windows apps and your Linux apps for free; which option will you pursue?
The idea here is that Linux (and XFree86 and WINE) should embrace the Win32 API and extend upon that functionality with native Linux apps.
If Linux could do everything Windows can and more, and do it cheaper, why would anyone buy Windows?
More benefical is Quicktime. No more crummy RealPlayer streams, QT is much nicer.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Don't try to use it on LinuxPPC though! =)
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
DATELINE JULY 9, 2001
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
KDE Web Browser Konqueror Gets Activ(eX)atedKonqueror Embraces ActiveX, Plays Shockwave Movies
July 9, 2001 (The INTERNET). Nikolas Zimmermann and Malte Starostik today announced the availability of reaktivate for Konqueror, KDE's web browser. Reaktivate enables Konqueror to embed ActiveX controls, such as the popular Shockwave movies, for which no native Linux/Unix solution exists. Reaktivate relies on the WINE libraries to load and run ActiveX controls.
With this addition, Konqueror now enables KDE users to take optimal advantage of sophisticated websites that make use of Microsoft Internet Explorer plugins, Netscape Communicator plugins for Linux and Java applets, as well as KDE plugins designed using KDE's KParts technology.
According to Malte, the reason he and Nikolas implemented reaktivate is rather simple: it broadens the spectrum of web sites accessible to Konqueror, and it was possible.
Successes and Limitations
Theoretically, Reaktivate can eventually be used to embed any ActiveX control into Konqueror. Currently, however, not all ActiveX controls are compatible with reaktivate. In particular, the Microsoft Windows Media Player cannot be installed using reaktivate (though it is not known if a player which is already installed will work with reaktivate). Thus it is likely there exist other ActiveX controls which will not yet work with reaktivate. Work is ongoing to increase compatability with other ActiveX controls, including the Apple QuickTime plugin.
So far, however, reaktivate has been successfully tested with the following ActiveX controls:
Note on Security
Install ActiveX controls only from sites that you trust. Microsoft's ActiveX technology has often been criticized for weak security. Those controls are dynamic libraries that are executed exactly like any other piece of code installed on the user's system. This means they have full access to the file system, the system registry etc. As a means to establish the users' trust in the controls a web site wishes to install, every ActiveX control is cryptographically signed and carries a certificate issued by an authority known to the web browser (like VeriSign). A control that has no signature or no certificate or if they are invalid will not be installed.
With reaktivate the situation is similar: the installed controls can call every WinAPI function provided by the WINE libraries and therefore have access to WINE's registry and all files visible to the WINE installation. The current implementation of reaktivate will ask the user for confirmation to install a new control, but it will not check the embedded certificate and signature. This is due to technical reasons as well as limited time. Therefore we strongly advise to install controls only from sites that you trust. To save your files from malicious controls, you might also consider using this feature only from a seperate user account that has no access to your main user's files. Reaktivate will not run from the root account.
Installing ReaktivateSource code for reaktivate is freely available under a Free, Open Source license from the kdenonbeta module in KDE's CVS repository and its mirrors. See the KDE website for information about how to get a module from CVS. You only need the toplevel, admin and reaktivate directories from kdenonbeta. Before compiling, get the latest CVS version of WINE (a snapshot will likely not be new enough). Next, apply all patches from reaktivate/patches-for-wine/ against the WINE sources and build/install WINE. Finally, you can build and install reaktivate.
Disclaimer: reaktivate is not in any manner sponsored or endorsed by, affiliated with, or otherwise related to, Microsoft Corporation.
Thanks to Andreas "Dre" Pour and Navindra Umanee for assisting in drafting this release.
You confuse between Flash and Shockwave - many people do - specially since Macromedia called it Shockwave flash, but they are 2 creates with some similarities - but they target different world each..
Example - Shockwave can do 3D (using hardware renderer or software one - depends on your DirectX [on Reactivate it will be probably running with OpenGL thanks to the WineX team]). Flash - not
There are 2 different players - Flash 5 (which is available to all popular OS's and then there is Shockwave 8.5 - which is only available under Windows and Mac (and now soon - anything that can run Wine)..
Hetz (Heunique)
Plenty of "run of the mill" plug-ins can be delivered via ActiveX. When I installed Windows ME on my new PC, I hadn't been browsing (using MSIE) for half an hour before it offered to install the Macromedia Flash player for me - courtesy of an ActiveX control.
> We spend more time trying to get Microsoft-
> supported games to run on Linux than we do
> writing games for Linux.
We? Who is this "We" you're talking about? Do you personally spend lots of time trying to get Microsoft-supported games to work on Linux? I sure don't.
Maybe you should replace the word "We" with "a large number of people who are writing applications that they find useful and sharing them for free out of the goodness of their hearts." Then, your post will make perfect sense.
--JRZ
...but what's the big deal about ActiveX support? Other than some web-sites that are strictly internal to the companies I've worked for, I've not been anywhere I *HAD* to have ActiveX.
I thought it was already dead as a general use technology.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Just keep in mind all the security flaws that ActiveX is known for. If you read the info, it recommends running it under a separate user ID than your usual one, to protect your files.
Mind you, at the end of the day I am convinced that 90% of Linux users (and /. readers) complain about OS monopolies whilst not giving a damn about a potential platform monopoly. So perhaps it doesn't matter anyway.
I'm personally a little tired of hearing about security risks relating to ActiveX. There has been a lot of news of security problems related to ActiveX, but those problems have been the fault of IE's implementation of it. Not the technology's itself.
I like to relate ActiveX to a gun. When used properly it can be a great tool. When used improperly it can be very dangerous. ActiveX is actually quite useful and when implemented properly is just as safe as any other peice of software. Saying that ActiveX itself is a huge security risk is like saying that the domain name system is a huge security risk because bind has been known to have a lot of security holes.
And for those who think "well it's just another crap m$ technology to try and replace better, already existing technologies" the only thing I have to say is that ActiveX (like almost all MS 'innovations') was actually developed by a smaller company that was assimilated by MS. MS didn't create it themselves so stop saying ActiveX sucks just because it tends to be associated with MS.
--
Garett
Ok, can anyone pull, of the top of their head, a site that still uses ActiveX components over Java, Flash, ?
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
Why is it so hard to understand that this is a useful feature and helpful to establishing this OS as a useable alternative?
Of course Linux users don't like the idea of ActiveX sites. We realize that ActiveX limits us to a Microsoft OS and certain hardware. But, these developers realize that a Windows user who feels restricted by using a Linux OS isn't going to switch to it. How many Linux users run a dual-boot or second Windows machine for games? I run Windows on my main machine because I don't have an alternative for some applications I consider important. I use Linux for everything else that I possibly can.
As long as we have developers creating alternatives, we attract more users and increase the number of Linux machines. The developers here should be commended.
This is good news. I'm not a K user, but this still affects the entire linux community, and I think it's a good thing. Inter-operability with other OSs and applications is what makes linux immediately superior to other OSs :)
:)
The problem with supporting these "windows only" plugins is that web developers are STILL filtering their sites based on OS and browser string. Even though my browser (galeon) is perfectly able to display http://www.shockwave.com, I go there and get a "platform not supported" message for EVERY FSCKING PAGE on their site. Someone in the office managed to get in with either Konq or Opera by changing the os and browser string to windows/ie5, but this is not a valid option in my opinion.
Even if galeon or konq suddenly had the ability to view shockwave files, they would still not be allowed into the site, as on every page there is a browser/os check. Now I know this is not true for all sites, or perhaps even a majority of them, but it is something that affects non-windows and non-IE users every day, and I have no idea how to fix it.
Web designers have it in their ability without doing much. A friend of mine supports all OSs and browsers on his site even though it has heavy use of CSS and all the "new" tricks. He could write a huge amount of java script and multiple pages to display different things based on the browser, but he simply supports HTML4 (which is fine for ie, mozilla, galeon, ns6, etc) and strips all CSS for others. So while netscape 4.x doesn't look as pretty, the information is all there.
Even though I give him shit for not taking the time to support a still prominent browser (ns 4.x), I applaud him for not putting a big "you suck, get a new browser and use windows and ie" sign up for all non ie5 users.
I guess the trick is getting the web developers the information that non IE browsers DO support the latest standards and look just dandy.
Oh, and shockwave.com... you suck
Before people start flaming about security:
This is only a developer's release, not ready for KDE Prime Time, and the security issues are already being considered. There are several options existing to protect Unix users including proper use of non-priviledged accounts (perhaps by setuid'ing reaktivate to nobody), chroot, sandboxes... etc. And after all this, KDE will probably still not enable ActiveX by default on any system. Remember, Konqueror does not even enable Java or JavaScript by default yet.
As for the usefulness of ActiveX in KDE, one of the main purposes of the developers is to help companies with an investment in ActiveX controls (perhaps on their internal sites or intranet) to migrate over to KDE systems. As a plus, of course, us users may get to enjoy Shockwave and QuickTime for which no free software solution is in sight.
So celebrate this for what this is: A rewly hack validating the KDE and WINE technologies that the Free Software wourld has brought us.
Cheers,
-N.
> Should we be developing substitutes or alternatives for ActiveX instead of trying to recreate it?
Who is this "we" you speak of? Are you doing any development for any open source project? Specifically, are you working on Wine? If not, then it is not your "we" to consider. Obviously, the people working on this find it worthwhile. If you feel that other projects should be worked on, then devote your effort to those. The developer effort of the Wine project is not your's to command.
> Get your priorities straight: Linux ought to be an alternative, not a poor imitation.
Those are *your* priorities. They happen to be mine as well, but that isn't the point. Developers have their own goals, so you shouldn't expect them to work toward *your's* instead.
In particular, I think Miguel is overly fond of copying Microsoft. It's not how I would develop Gnome, but I'm not the one doing it...Miguel and the others are, and they will do it how they see fit. But you and I have no authority over them, so they will continue to develop as they please.
--Lenny
Both developments has their good and bad sides.
ActiveX support can be very important in multi-OS work environments and for many on-line banking sites, for example.
On the other hand, sandboxing it and turning it off by default doesn't sound like a bad idea. But don't worry, as long as this requires Wine CVS and as long as the activexproxy is a program in kdenonbeta, it won't be installed by default on your distribution.
Same with the new Ximian developments: embracing and cooperating with SOAP sounds like a good idea.
I _would_ be very careful about .NET development since it is basically Microsoft's proprietary lock-in platform to make sure SOAP will give them _more_ control, not _less_, but cooperation is good. Even so, it is not like we KDE people are totally against SOAP support, some projects already use it.
Furthermore, I like to stress that ActiveX support originated as a proof-of-concept and "cool factor" development. The responses we received at LinuxTag confirmed this.
...I can deactivate ActiveX support under Linux, too. Great!
God, root, what is difference? - Pitr
Well, there's another, more important, piece of work going on according to the article. They're trying to get QuickTime working as well! This is much more important than (bad, security flawed) activeX. Being able to watch movie trailers, streaming media from more sources, etc. is much more fun and useful than shockwave.
Wine is good, but I can't get it to run QuickTime, though I try with every revision. I can reliably get Windows Media Player to run under Wine, but that's not good enough. This is one place where Linux sucks; we'll never get decent streaming multimedia support (Real doesn't cut it!) until someone licenses the codecs and releases a product (which will cause all the GPL freaks to scream because they'll want to charge for it; you may think I'm flaming, but every damn time I read something about good comercial software here, most people just complain that it's not free!).
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Konqueror is getting support for The Force? Sweet! Or is it just Force-compatible? Sigh... I was so looking forward to saying,
to Internet Explorer... .
There is one thing that isn't to clear in the press releases: As Wine is i386 only, the support for activeX is of course only available for KDE running on Intel I386 architechture.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
What's next, are they going to port the BSOD to be some daemon that runs and randomly crashes the system to be more compatible with Windows?
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Why is KDE relying on ActiveX? Shouldn't we be developing a better technology instead of using Micro$oft's?
Leaving aside the question of who the "we" is who is always invoked in such remarks, this is a clever, useful hack by a couple of developers that's in kdenonbeta. No one is proposing to build KDE around ActiveX, no one is telling companies to stop making native plugins and it's not like a significant drain on resources went into making it.
Isn't this a huge security risk?
On the KDE site's discussion, Malte mentioned they were working on a chroot-based sandboxing method. This is still a work in progress and they tell you not to use it on sites you don't trust. And for God's sake, don't run it as root!! It's not going into the 2.2 release and anyone who is capable of installing it today ought to have the sense to run it carefully.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.