5 ms·

The title is nonsense, here is the microsoft blog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/14/metro-style-browsing-and-plug-in-free-html5.aspx http://b

by 0x12 15y ago

The title is nonsense, here is the microsoft blog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/14/metro-style-browsing-and-plug-in-free-html5.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/14/metro-style-br...

chico_dusty 15y ago
It's not really nonsense at all. Limiting plugins to the legacy UI no one wants to use on a tablet is pretty much abandoning them.
davedx 15y ago
Sensationalist maybe, but nonsense? It seems clear Microsoft is moving towards a plugin-free user experience.
- est 15y ago
  User experience aside, plug-free really means developer experience sucks. Now everyone has to wait for some sucky organization called w3c to invent ideas, and company called Microsoft or Apple or Google to implement them. You know how new technology should emerge? Thirdparty push them, not providers allow them.
  - sid0 15y ago
    That is a very dishonest representation of how the Web standardization process works.
    - slowpoke 15y ago
      He does have a point with the third parties though. Software ecosystems controlled by a single (in most cases proprietary) entity are bad.
    - Silhouette 15y ago
      The trouble is, right now we don't really have a web stanardisation process. We've got HTML5 and CSS3 in the works, of course, but the reality is that we're in the middle of Microsoft vs. Netscape, all over again. If you want to use CSS3 tools, even those that are widely supported across browsers, you often have to code up the same effect 3/4/5 times with slightly different syntaxes. If you want to use HTML5 elements, even just the simple semantic ones, you need to incorporate backward compatibility fixes for IE before version 9 (which is a very substantial chunk of the browsing public, since WinXP only goes up to IE8). If you want to use the more interactive HTML5 elements, it's even worse. HTML5 video won't be a credible successor to Flash video until there is a standardised, high quality a/v format that all browsers support. Even then, the simple fact is that Flash video players offer way more powerful customisation and some features involving content streaming and protection that are still commercially relevant even if the "everything should be free" crowd want to bury their heads in the sand. We have SVG and HTML5 Canvas technology to do drawing without relying on plug-ins these days, except that when you actually try to use them, you find that they aren't always supported to the same extent on all popular browsers, particularly the mobile ones where avoiding the weight of downloading a plug-in seems most advantageous of all. Did I mention web fonts? (Not that it matters until the on-demand font services realise they aren't special and most of us are never going to rent a font instead of paying one-time fees like we do for stock images, blog templates, etc. Or until the rendering on some platforms means most of the fonts actually available don't like the rear end of an animal with stomach problems. But hopefully those issues will pass, at which point having a common font format would be handy too.) All the while, Mozilla and Google are having a pissing match to see who can release some bleeding edge thing faster than the other, but since no-one else supports it the same way yet, it's basically worthless. Meanwhile, they keep pushing releases every few weeks, and they do break things, often those very HTML5 and CSS3 features we're all meant to love that are supposedly driving web technology development. (Google screwed up rounded corners for several successive versions. Firefox still doesn't get basic font rendering right on a lot of platforms, and the current version can't even look up locally installed fonts properly. Don't even start trying to do tricky things like using Java applets -- and before anyone chimes in about obsolete technologies, remember that there was a big push to improve support for applets not so long ago, and that many state-of-the-art programming languages run on the JVM.) The recurring theme in all of this, of course, is that you can't write one thing that runs reliably everywhere today. Until you can, any so-called standards will just be marketing propaganda for one browser team or another.
    - pnathan 15y ago
      Eh, it seems to be borne out. The w3c seems to be more hot air than effective body: whatever the browsers decide is standard is standard.
- 0x12 15y ago
  That must be why flash, silverlight and all the other 'goodies' are still supported, just not in one particular view.
  - ConstantineXVI 15y ago
    Microsoft prides itself on extending backwards compatibility as far as it reasonably can. Hence the "legacy" mode that maintains the traditional Windows desktop/UI and support for browser plugins. Everything in new shiny Metro land is a clean start, so it's reasonable to say "We aren't going to support ActiveX controls in the browser anymore" there.

by 0x12 15y ago

chico_dusty 15y ago

It's not really nonsense at all. Limiting plugins to the legacy UI no one wants to use on a tablet is pretty much abandoning them.

davedx 15y ago

Sensationalist maybe, but nonsense? It seems clear Microsoft is moving towards a plugin-free user experience.

est 15y ago
User experience aside, plug-free really means developer experience sucks. Now everyone has to wait for some sucky organization called w3c to invent ideas, and company called Microsoft or Apple or Google to implement them. You know how new technology should emerge? Thirdparty push them, not providers allow them.
- sid0 15y ago
  That is a very dishonest representation of how the Web standardization process works.
  - slowpoke 15y ago
    He does have a point with the third parties though. Software ecosystems controlled by a single (in most cases proprietary) entity are bad.
  - Silhouette 15y ago
    The trouble is, right now we don't really have a web stanardisation process. We've got HTML5 and CSS3 in the works, of course, but the reality is that we're in the middle of Microsoft vs. Netscape, all over again. If you want to use CSS3 tools, even those that are widely supported across browsers, you often have to code up the same effect 3/4/5 times with slightly different syntaxes. If you want to use HTML5 elements, even just the simple semantic ones, you need to incorporate backward compatibility fixes for IE before version 9 (which is a very substantial chunk of the browsing public, since WinXP only goes up to IE8). If you want to use the more interactive HTML5 elements, it's even worse. HTML5 video won't be a credible successor to Flash video until there is a standardised, high quality a/v format that all browsers support. Even then, the simple fact is that Flash video players offer way more powerful customisation and some features involving content streaming and protection that are still commercially relevant even if the "everything should be free" crowd want to bury their heads in the sand. We have SVG and HTML5 Canvas technology to do drawing without relying on plug-ins these days, except that when you actually try to use them, you find that they aren't always supported to the same extent on all popular browsers, particularly the mobile ones where avoiding the weight of downloading a plug-in seems most advantageous of all. Did I mention web fonts? (Not that it matters until the on-demand font services realise they aren't special and most of us are never going to rent a font instead of paying one-time fees like we do for stock images, blog templates, etc. Or until the rendering on some platforms means most of the fonts actually available don't like the rear end of an animal with stomach problems. But hopefully those issues will pass, at which point having a common font format would be handy too.) All the while, Mozilla and Google are having a pissing match to see who can release some bleeding edge thing faster than the other, but since no-one else supports it the same way yet, it's basically worthless. Meanwhile, they keep pushing releases every few weeks, and they do break things, often those very HTML5 and CSS3 features we're all meant to love that are supposedly driving web technology development. (Google screwed up rounded corners for several successive versions. Firefox still doesn't get basic font rendering right on a lot of platforms, and the current version can't even look up locally installed fonts properly. Don't even start trying to do tricky things like using Java applets -- and before anyone chimes in about obsolete technologies, remember that there was a big push to improve support for applets not so long ago, and that many state-of-the-art programming languages run on the JVM.) The recurring theme in all of this, of course, is that you can't write one thing that runs reliably everywhere today. Until you can, any so-called standards will just be marketing propaganda for one browser team or another.
  - pnathan 15y ago
    Eh, it seems to be borne out. The w3c seems to be more hot air than effective body: whatever the browsers decide is standard is standard.
0x12 15y ago
That must be why flash, silverlight and all the other 'goodies' are still supported, just not in one particular view.
- ConstantineXVI 15y ago
  Microsoft prides itself on extending backwards compatibility as far as it reasonably can. Hence the "legacy" mode that maintains the traditional Windows desktop/UI and support for browser plugins. Everything in new shiny Metro land is a clean start, so it's reasonable to say "We aren't going to support ActiveX controls in the browser anymore" there.