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."

Comments

Shockwave?

[Daengbo]

Maybe now there will finally be some of the missing plugins like Shockwave.
Not that I really want it, but my kids do.

Pay attention!

[tod_miller]

English Articles:
http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2 004/06/30/
http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-2 004-06-30.ht ml

"Apple, Macromedia, Opera and Sun Microsystems"

Spot the odd one out! I misread Macromedia as Mozilla for a second.

Notable by its absence I see. Macromedia obviously want to be in the mix, as they want everyone everywhere to use their lovely Flash and Director.

Sun is a puzzle in this, what do they have to gain? aaah the Java plugin. Well all sorted here, Opera want to pull in a little more weight, feeling the heat from FireFox I guess.

FireFox! Oh I do so kill myself.

Wow

[Gr8Apes]

If this could be completed quickly, this would be a huge boon to consumers everywhere, making life much simpler for Joe Sixpack. It would be another step in commoditizing the underlying OS, and the web browser in a sense as well, as you don't have to worry about plug in support as long as it was a compliant browser.

And with CERT saying ditch IE, there's no better time than today to have this type of action. Unfortunately, it doesn't exist yet....

w3c?

[ols22]

Does anyone know how the w3c fits into this?

Re:Pay attention! (esp. me!)

[tod_miller]

RTFA a bit more - Mozilla is pushing it, ah well this is all well and cushy!

The best part is that writing a plugin should now be easier. SVG plugin anyone? :-)

Good work. Perhaps they will start sharing more code, after all, I only really want one good browser, not 5 alright ones!

u must be hating the lizard..

[roror]

seriously .. slashdotting it everyday?
now on topic.. isn't sun standing in for MS there ?
And on a more serious note .. for what are these multimedia and java plugins good for anyways ? But, these kinda aliances good, 'cause they will help move the lazy MS ass to do some serious work atleast.

So Firefox is gonna change the plugin API again?

[Dr. Spork]

Grr! The transition from Firefox 0.8 to 0.9 was a big pain, as you had to wait for all the extensions to get repackaged before you could upgrade. It was a pretty big headache, because it wasn't clearly marked what works with 0.9 and what doesn't.

On the other hand, I expect that plugins will get even better once they have an audience beyond the standard Mozilla browsers. And I'm happy they're leaving out Microsoft. Let's finally put to rest that tired Internet Explorer!

Re:Where's MS

[WindBourne]

While I am not a MS coder (well not in 13 years), I would suspect that these folks could easily develop a plugin adaptor for MSIE. It would not be difficult and would probably prompt MS to do something. Now the question is, what will MS do?

Shockwave.

[Raven42rac]

I use Firefox on both Windows and Mac, and have not had the need for shockwave yet, java and flash shoul d be standard too. At least this just wraps them all up in 1 package.

A little like what we've had in the audio...

[Phil John]

...world for some time. There is a widely adopted "open" standard (VST-Virtual Studio Technology). They are not cross platform as they are native software, however I can load up one of a number of sequencers on Windows and use the same plugins.

There are competing plugin formats such as Direct X, but VST's seem to have the market pretty sewn up - there's even bindings for java :o)

One the mac side of things Apple introduced AudioUnits which seem to be gaining popularity.

The great thing is, since developers no longer have to target a certain platform (i.e. only one sequencer family) you see a huge wealth of plugins available to be used on anything - hopefully we'll see that same kind of developer community flourish around rich-content plugins for the web.

Re:A little like what we've had in the audio...

[Phil John]

Never took a look at LADSPA as I'm stuck on windows until we see a version of Cubase for linux, or a linux solution that provides all of the functionality of cubase.

But for your own comparison take a look at Kvr-VST which is a vst plugin news/listing site.

There are basically two types of plugin, a simple VST which is for things like effects units and then there are VSTi's which are virtual instruments. Native Instruments do a whole load that emulate synths of bygone days almost perfectly. Korg has also just released three classic synth's as VSTi's which sound so much like the real thing it's scary.

How about a sandbox that works

[xyote]

or will lynx be the only secure browser?

Remember, your browser is only secure as the least secure plug-in.

This will really help the developer community

[tentimestwenty]

Ya, they finally got smart. Even though they're all smaller companies than Microsoft, their mindshare and market sway is probably as great together at least in industry circles. Hopefully this just accelerates the whole browser development cycle by letting developers know there's a consortium and there will be standards.

Yes but

[line.at.infinity]

would Apple push for standardization of synchronization between bookmarks (a feature they will be including in Safari for Mac OS 10.4)? Cross-browser synchronization of bookmarks would be very handy for people who want to try more than one browser.

What's the point?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

The only plugin that could be said to cater to an otherwise neglected niche is Flash. And hopefully with browsers natively supporting SVG, someday it's usefullness will wither, too.

Plugins are just excuses for Adobe Acrobat in the browser window bullshit. For all those fools that put up Word and PDF all over the place, get a clue already.

Re:One Problem

[aka-ed]

It has more potential to make a difference without MS involvement, IMO; if they can provide a secure, convenient, reliable plug-in architecture, it becomes a security alternative to Microsoft's, which (like most of what they do) is too deeply rooted into the system to ever be reasonably safe. I think this is a matter of the neighbor kids banding together to target a weak spot on the "neighborhood bully."

Of course, if successful, MS may want to "embrace and extend" here, but they should not be involved in the development, as the spec should not have to consider the special needs of IE as it's being developed.

Re:Where's MS

[swordboy]

Why are they scared of working towards a standardized future?

Microsoft would rather have Windows-only spyware.

MS don't like anything "cross-platform". Witness the whole java fiasco that took 10 years to sort out.

But back to the spyware thing.

What is needed is a "standard working set" of open, cross-platform plug-ins for all browsers. Now, they don't have to be mandatory of default but we have to STOP PROMPTING JOE USERS with ActiveX security warnings because THEY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS MEANS.

But, in the mean time, I would suggest to everyone in need of a few bucks to start their own "Windows Reinstall" business. Simply put up a few flyers at grocery stores (sometimes, even word of mouth is enough to get you more than enough business). You'll be bombarded with boxen that need a simple Windows reinstall. What I have been doing is simply swapping hard drives, throwing down a standard Windows image (you'll have to accumulate them as you get different hardware along the way) and then bring everything back over into a backup folder and let the user sort it out (or charge more to make it nice).

I do it for $50 a pop which might seem low but once you get a system down, it takes no time whatsoever. Just buy a bunch of cheap, refub drives of various sizes to keep handy. Provided the user's hard drive doesn't have any bad sectors (extra money here as well), there's really nothing to it. Oh - and make sure that the PC has a valid Win2K or XP license sticker on it before accepting it.

I do about 20/month which works out to about an extra grand in spending cash for approximately 2 hours per night that I'm usually just watching TV anyway. This is strictly drop-off and pick up service. Everything else extra.

Re:Where's MS

[Anonymous Writer]

Maybe they're trying to get publicity for it, and will apply it later down the line to more than just web browsers. Active X works for other things too like databases, which is really useful. If Linux and Mac OS had a similar standard, it could be applied in other programs on both platforms. That kind of functionality is missing on both platforms at the moment, I think. Apple, IBM, and Lotus tried to establish OpenDoc ages ago but it didn't catch.

Macromedia must also be getting into this because Microsoft sees Flash as a threat to their control of the interface and plans to push their own standard, "Sparkle". Flash seems to have accomplished what Java applets were supposed to do on the web, providing a cross-platform programming language that actually works without interference from Microsoft, and can be used for more than just animation. Macromedia Central was supposed to allow Flash to be used for making applications that can work independently of a web browser, seamlessly across different platforms, but I don't know why that hasn't caught on either.

Re:What they really need.

[Pantheraleo2k3]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/components/acti vex/packaging.asp

Microsoft page on packaging ActiveX controls. Just take the .zip version of Firefox, put it into a CAB, add a .bat file to work with the shortcuts, and put in the necessary ActiveX magic and you could have just that.

I for one welcome our new Self-Installing IE Firefox Overlords

Yay, More Spyware!!!

[dduardo]

I really hope they think this standard through and implement some type of certificate authentication or something. I don't want to my browser to automatically download stuff onto my computer. I already checked off all the automatic downloading in firefox. I would rather go through the hassle of manully typing in the address of the software developer's website and downloading the pluginh from there.

Re:Where's MS

[los furtive]

So you're suggesting we dump html and move to flash? Ignore the open standard and move to something proprietary? I really don't think that's a good idea.

The parent comment never said that, nor do I think they implied it. He made only three points:

1. that this new standard could be used for more than just web plugins further down the road (a la activeX)
2. Macromedia has a vested interest in this since MS is about to come out with a competing product and and any ease of use issues with installing a plugin could affect Macromedia's ability to compete.
3. Flash has caught on and done what applets were supposed to do in the first place and if you tie this with point 1 then maybe you'll see it outside of the browser, and in a cross platform manner.

Although your concerns are valid, I don't think they had any bearing on points the original comment made.

Good point

[WindBourne]

I am almost surprised that MS does not go along with all this.

Any cracks on this would allow for some damage on other systems. This would allow MS to state that Linux, BSD, and Mac have no security.

And yes, if the install is done at user level, the *nix OS would still be operating, but the users data would quite possible be wiped, or their passwords stolen, or their Credit card numbers stolen, etc. Users do not really care if an OS survives or not. They are finally starting to care about all the money being stolen. This is only because the news media is finally pointing out that these problems are soley from MS systems.