Plugins versus browser builtin [LWN.net]

Plugins versus browser builtin

Posted Mar 8, 2008 23:33 UTC (Sat) by epa (subscriber, #39769)
In reply to: MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld) by hitmark
Parent article: MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld)

Surely any new media format like SVG or Silverlight needs to first be implemented as a browser
plugin, and only later built in to the browser if it proves popular.

The Netscape 1.0 vision of the Web as a nest of binary-only formats each handled by its own
binary-only plugin doesn't appeal much.  But Moonlight is free software.

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Plugins versus browser builtin

Posted Mar 9, 2008 9:27 UTC (Sun) by chromatic (subscriber, #26207) [Link]

Moonlight is free software until you want to use patent-encumbered codecs.  That dulls its
shine for me at least.

Plugins versus browser builtin

Posted Mar 10, 2008 4:08 UTC (Mon) by jwb (subscriber, #15467) [Link]

This doesn't square with history, really.  SVG was implemented as an Adobe binary plugin and
almost nobody used it.  As soon as it was integrated into Firefox, it became much more
popular, and then WebKit picked up the format as well.

Plugins versus browser builtin

Posted Mar 11, 2008 19:50 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Well, at one point it was *removed* from default Mozilla builds because, 
um, nobody used it. It's still pretty rare in my experience.

Plugins versus browser builtin

Posted Mar 11, 2008 19:58 UTC (Tue) by jwb (subscriber, #15467) [Link]

Sure, it's very rare, but you can't do dynamic graphics with PNGs or GIFs.  SVG is the only
game in town with a decent API, followed by Canvas (which can't do text) and then Flash (which
is proprietary).  I think you'll find that SVG is pretty common on Wikipedia, where it's often
used for maps and diagrams.