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New Alliance Hopes To Standardize Web Plug-Ins
mksolutions writes "As reported on heise online and mozilla.org 'Apple, Macromedia, Opera and Sun Microsystems join in push to modernize plugins and create a richer web experience.' They are to develop a common, cross-platform plug-in interface which will be used in Mozilla products as well as Opera and Safari and will be released under an open source license."
Why are they scared of working towards a standardized future?
I Hope that all browsers involved would allow me to point to my own plugin directory, so I don't have to have a different copy of the same file for each browser I use.
how exactly is this supposed to work differntly than the current model. Konqueror and thus I assume safari can already use mozilla/netscape plugins. How exactly are they planning on using the exact same plugin for different OS's using different machine archetectures? This looks a lot like java.
Now, regardless of browser, everyone can have 10,372 smileys and valuable advertisements from Hotbar.
Don't reinvent Active-X with all its problems. Maybe browsers *don't* need standard, easy-to-install extensions (think BHO and ActiveX)
Best Buy can have you arrested
Right.. I'm guessing this is just going to make it easier for the the plug-in companies to make plug-ins for the smaller browsers. Instead of making a plug-in for Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, etc.. They only need to make one two now. One for all of those and another for IE. As you said, they arent going to stop making one for IE... i mean.. 70%+ dominance is a pretty big number :)
Hmmm.
There is a difference between standardize and monopolize. You need to be alone to monopolize. Standards *are* good. As long as they are open and everybody can use them.
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
And unfortunately 95% of the world will probably never get the benefit of this.
...and release the plug-ins themselves (hear Flash) under an open source license.
.swf more or less an open standard?), at least, could they release their plug-in for other archs?
I'm not playing the open source fanatic here, but I'd really like them (*cough* macromedia *cough*) to realize that Linux is more than Red Hat.
Being a Gentoo PPC user, I still have no way to play flash on my iBook (well, I can boot it on OS X).
If really they want to protect their trade secrets (are there any? Isn't
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
Whilst it's all very well for us "FireFox on Linux" users to gloat about our immunity from scumware; we must be aware that the developers of scumware only target IE _because_ it is the most prolific browser. The security weaknesses of IE are more likely the second reason.
Now if a critical mass of Internet users migrate to FF/Moz/Saf etc., scumware authors WILL target this shared extension architecture.
Now, it is all very well saying that the Mozilla platform may not allow drive-by installation (to the best of our knowledge); but remember that scumware is often installed through social engineering of the user. "This website requires Hyperviewing 3D Spatial Extension" (bundled with scumware for your convenience); and the user may click "Yes" to install without second thought.
How you go about allowing extension installation whilst maintaining a level of sanity needs carefull thought at this stage.
they are just trying to get rid of the fanboys since exploits will affect ALL browsers then... ;)
You seem to assume that plugins would autoinstall themselves. I certaintly hope this would not be the case.
Also, you might get that if all browsers on all platforms came with the same default plugins. However, there are already a set of default plugins (mostly java and flash is what I see), but there hasn't been that many problems with them.
Now if someone decided to port activex over to this new plugin interface, then I'll be worried. But that'd be awfully difficult because, as I understand it, activex is depenedant on large chunks of the windows api.
On the contrary, IE is coming up short of ammo in the "browser war" and slowly becoming irrelevant. Microsoft even gave up on it once (last year?) and then picked it up again. Microscoft needs to decide if it's customers best interest is going to be their future policy, or if they need to put capital gain in the forefront as it has historically proven.
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I don't want a richer web experience, I want a lightweight (less animation, video, audio, system and network overhead), free from annoying ads that control my browser, and free from exploits -- I DO NOT want to be running code from web sites on my PC, sandbox or no sandbox.
Apple wants Quicktime, Sun wants Java, Macromedia wants Flash, and Mozilla wants to be invited to the party, and I don't want page loads to be made even slower by MORE FUCKING TV commercial ads bloated by Quicktime, Java, Flash and corrupting the one browser I can halfway trust.
If I want to watch TV, I'll watch TV.
You make a good argument, yet you missed a detail.
The name "Safari".
Apple makes everything automagical, sometimes at the expense of security. Their recent exploits were nothing more than a few protocol handlers that could've run amok. Protocol handlers. For standard protocols (except the help one). They made protocol handlers dangerous by making them do things without user intervention.
Now, of course, this doesn't mean that all platforms will have to install these plugins automatically. But knowing Apple, most of the functionality will be wrapped up in the plugin itself, possibly torpedoing any attempt to keep the clueless type of users informed of what's on their machine (there will probably be a preference pane in the app that shows a list of installed plugins and gives you an easy way to remove them, but you'll have to know it's there).
ActiveX isn't your only worry. This plugin architecture is a form of homogeny that will span platforms and ensure that malware is a write-once-run-anywhere thing if it's not handled correctly.
(-1, Tinfoil Hat)
I deliberately haven't installed the flash/shockwave type plugins and I run Mozilla. I do so so I don't have to see adverts etc. There are some sites that won't work like that but what with SVG and Javascript I reckon the emphasis on 3rd party plugins for animation will slowly wane.
Also... this isn't about what _YOU_ want. Browsers are for everybody who wants web access and that in itself presents a problem - one can't keep all the people happy all the time. If enough people have your attitude then you'll probably find a browser port that intentionally blocks the use of plugins.
That's called consumer choice and market pressure. A standard plugin architecture will also help a lot of corporations produce their own cross platform plugins that allow them to use a web browser as a GUI to, say, a corporate database, maintenance code or some such. That would be VERY useful IMHO.
Matthew.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
To a certain extent I would agree with you. However while I agree with your comment about word files; PDF is probably the best choice for publishing "download - and - print" documents on the web at this current time; It is a well documented and well supported file format that practically everyone can read and print. I dont particularly like embedding pdf's into the browser; having a pdf that I can download and print at my convenience is far more preferable to most other downloadable file formats.
Purists would say the web was never meant for all these new-fangled plugins and fancy schmancy flash sites. While there are thousands of examples of how the internet should and shouldnt be used it always boils down to one thing. Information, and the ease at which it can be accessed. I personally dont know of a better more crossplatform solution in widespread use than PDF for "download-and-print", that retain the look and feel of the original document. There are some upgoming formats in the sideline SVG & XML et al; But i have more respect for a webmaster who takes the time to publish pdf's than one that sticks the word file on the web and hopes for the best, But that is not to say when the standards compliant formats come to fruition that we should not push and encourage their use.
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If this could be completed quickly, this would be a huge boon to consumers everywhere, making life much simpler for Joe Sixpack.
/. still care about Joe Sixpack. Noone has really mentioned him lately, and I thought noone cared :)
First off, its good to see people on
OK, now for the meat here. Joe Sixpack, odds are he will buy a Dell computer with Windows [0-9A-Z]{2,4} that has an internet icon on the desktop that loads Internet Explorer which at worst will have a slightly older version of the flash plugin installed, where the hip web developer can detect the version and say "Click here to get the latest version", and since its too easy to install software on Windows, a click away, and he's off and running.
Let me say this about plugins. I HATE THEM. Some of it is because I've been through too much with them, that even if they work now, I'm still scared.
Back in the day, there was the plugin craze. This was probably the first instance of spyware for some of the plugins. Then you could not go to a website that did not require a laundry list of exotic plugins so that you could look at the text and pictures on their site. Being a Linux user, these plugins were few and far between, and the ones that did exist were very sucessful in crashing Netscape (something it didn't need much help with as it was). Recently, I had a conflict with flash on linux and it was blocking my soundcard and would just hang. In my web experience, plugins have not been a feature, but a problem. I've never found them useful, eyecandy at most.
My personal opinion is that plugins should not exist for the web. They are unnecessary. If you want me to download something and run it with a helper app, thats fine, but I do not need this junk inlined with the html. I don't like the old versions of the embeded acrobat reader that didn't allow you to save the document, and did 202 requests or whatever to get partial content, so the 1st page loaded fast, and every other may be slow. Same with movies, let me download and double click on them, I don't need them in my browser window. Currently, I have 10 windows open, plus 4 webpages in tabs. I can manage an 11th window to get some "featurerich" content. Odds are, you are using a mutitasking OS as well. Also, its really annoying when I'm navigating a website via the keyboard and my mouse pointer goes overtop of an obnoxious flash advertisement and it siezes the keyboard input. Thanks.
Now that I think about it, standardizing plugins could be the revamping of the plugin craze (read spyware). Maybe I'm too simleminded, but I still cannot think of a need to have 3rd party code running inline with my webbrowser.
Yes. They've already specified standards that do what these companies want to do. But the standards aren't held exclusively by these companies and tailored to their income needs. So all of this has already been designed and specified and is ready to be implemented now.
funny munging
I know we all think we like plugins - for me at least it evokes the early days of netscape corporation, and VRML, and Flash, and Java, and the idea of "limitless possiblilities".
But now that we've great gpl'ed browser, plugin is just another word for "longwinded not-as-good-as-gpl click-thru licensing agreement".
while it's obvious to see the good aspects to this proposal, I certainly don't want a chance of windows vulnerabilites being accidently ported to linux via a standardized plug in architecture. If opera and mozilla have to use a "standard", and they write something that *has to be useable in windows*, won't that have an affect of introducing potential unknown vulnerabilites that at some time will make everyone using any of the standards compliant plugins/browsers susceptible to some new windows exploit that could have been avoided in the first place?
I'm not a developer, I do not know the ins and outs of writing cross platform browsers or plugins, etc, so perhaps this won't matter, I honestly do not know, but it seems like it's a *maybe*. I hope I am incorrect obviously, but I just don'tknow.
I DO know I would be MUCH more "comfortable" with a good browser such as moz is now which was written exclusively for linux only though. Perhaps it's just psychological, but I keep getting feelings of cooties from this trying to be compatable with microsoft *anything*.
I don't want a "richer" web experience. Things already blink too much. Worse, plug-ins kill a normal standardization process. If there hadn't been any plug-ins, people would have been forced to standardize something like SVG much earlier instead of relying on Flash and similar systems.
Also, the problem with plug-ins is not their availability, it's version hell: you need to have the right constellation of library versions, operating system versions, and application versions. A plug-in standard usually still uses APIs other than those provided through the plug-in standard, so a standard won't change that.
Altogether, I think it's a bad idea. Let's get rid of plug-ins altogether and instead work towards better, universally implemented, open web standards.
SVG plugin is just silly, SVG is XML, browsers should handle that. SVG uses CSS, browsers should handle that. SVG being XML has a DOM, browsers should handle that and so allow Javascript to manipulate it easily. So SVG should be in the browser.
The funny thing is I recall word documents used to be the standard for distributing documents online ages ago, before the web, in the days of BBSes, Compuserve, and the pre-web AOL. Everyone had Word. I remember thinking that Word could display information better than Mosaic when it first came out, and I always thought that if Microsoft turned Word into a Web browser at that time, and used Word documents as the standard for web pages instead of HTML documents, they could have taken over the web at the very beginning rather than having to wrestle it away from Netscape. If they had any creativity and foresight, rather than blindly plagerising everything that is popular, that is what they should have done. It was such a no-brainer, I couldn't believe they missed it.
It appears to me that you have never used a mac. For that matter have you used firefox? The new plugin architecture is said to be based off the mozilla plugin architecture. What apple would do, actually already done by mozilla rather well, is allow the user to install a plugin by clicking a link, rather than having to download a plugin/installer and manually put it in the correct folder or have to search the net for the correct plugin to work for their particular architecture and system.
Apple never does anything without the user agreeing to it. What apple does is make it easy for the user to do what they want to do. Rather than on windows and linux where you have to hunt for every option you want. (not saying these systems have less functionality, in fact for the more complex and less used functions/power user functions, they can be easier to do on these systems.) You seem to be under the impression that apple thinks its users are idiots who shouldn't be told what is happening. Rather apple just provides an interface that in my opinion is better designed and therefore simpler to use.
I would argue that this is not making malware a write-once-run-anywhere thing. It would still come down to the idiot user installing the plugin (whether by clicking a simple link that works for all browsers or downloading and manually installing a plugin). My guess also is that in order to prevent malware, the plugins would have some restrictions on what they can do to the system. In other words I doubt malware plugins (because we will always have the idiot user who installs a plugin just because a web page tells him to, usually a porn page or something) that get installed will be destructive to the system, perhaps annoying, but not destructive.
This will be far superior to IE where if i just visit a site, i can get infected by malware. Rather there would have to be user interaction to install a plugin. Also unlike IE where if i shutdown the browser the malware is still running, if i shutdown the browsers with this standard plugin architecture the plugins will no longer run.
So before you go spouting off 'Facts' perhaps check them for yourself. It doesn't do any of us any good to just propogate rumors.
My $.02 -Peace
Couldn't they get together and create one super-plugin? I am sure most of the slashdot crowd wouldn't be interested in using it because most of us prefer finer control but it would be great for the average user who doesn't want to worry about plugins and just wants to browse the web and have everything work.
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There is a widely adopted "open" standard (VST-Virtual Studio Technology).
I'm glad that you put "open" in quotes. VST is free-as-in-beer, but not free-as-in-speech. Namely, you're not allowed to redistribute the VST SDK sourcecode. This makes it very, very difficult to include VST support in open-source programs, which is very annoying.
Most of the time, I hate "rich, interactive" websites. I want the freakin' thing to sit still and give me the information I came for. Yeah, the web will be rich alright. Nice, rich manure.
Really, my complaint isn't with plugins, per se. It's with the lack of restraint that web designers have in using them. Some web sites, such as Homestar Runner, wouldn't exist without Flash. Most other places I see it used, it adds nothing to the site except a layer of complexity, or it pummels me with advertisements.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!