3 ms·

Erm Microsoft added a lot of good stuff over the years and provide a hell of a lot of test cases for HTML5. They are also conservative about adding features and

Erm Microsoft added a lot of good stuff over the years and provide a hell of a lot of test cases for HTML5. They are also conservative about adding features and when they do, they work. Chrome is far more worrying, especially with things like NaCl, store front and various far future standards being implemented without proper consultation and ratification with othe vendors.

icebraining 14y ago
How is NaCl, which at least is OSS, any worse than ActiveX was?
- eckyptang 14y ago
  It's about the same, but everyone including Microsoft doesn't push ActiveX any more or that model as they admit that it's bad. Google are pushing it into Chrome as if it's the second coming. Also, fun facts: ActiveX was always an open well documented specification (based on COM) and was cross platform. It even worked on Solaris and HPUX with IE4 and on NT/MIPS!
- barik 14y ago
  I'm not really sure why your comment was down voted, it seems like a reasonable question to me. Just because something is open source doesn't automatically make it better (or worse) than a proprietary (in the sense of closed source) solution [1]. But if it isn't adopted by all of the __other__ browsers, then you're back to the same situation of having a fragmented browser experience, reminiscent of the "best viewed in Browser X" issues, some of which continue to plague developers today. I think it's legitimate, at least for some concerns, to compare NaCL to ActiveX, and be mindful of these concerns so that NaCL does not repeat some of the mistakes of ActiveX. [1] An older HN thread brought up some of these concerns: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2876282 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2876282 with naclbox.com.
- jonpaul 14y ago
  I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet, but it's my understanding that NaCl whitelists native instructions, whereas ActiveX is pure native that didn't run through any security hoops. Implication: NaCl is supposedly more secure.
  - eckyptang 14y ago
    The technical merits are not really relevant to how bad the idea is. NaCl is technically superior but the entire idea is just bad.

icebraining 14y ago

How is NaCl, which at least is OSS, any worse than ActiveX was?

eckyptang 14y ago
It's about the same, but everyone including Microsoft doesn't push ActiveX any more or that model as they admit that it's bad. Google are pushing it into Chrome as if it's the second coming. Also, fun facts: ActiveX was always an open well documented specification (based on COM) and was cross platform. It even worked on Solaris and HPUX with IE4 and on NT/MIPS!
barik 14y ago
I'm not really sure why your comment was down voted, it seems like a reasonable question to me. Just because something is open source doesn't automatically make it better (or worse) than a proprietary (in the sense of closed source) solution [1]. But if it isn't adopted by all of the __other__ browsers, then you're back to the same situation of having a fragmented browser experience, reminiscent of the "best viewed in Browser X" issues, some of which continue to plague developers today. I think it's legitimate, at least for some concerns, to compare NaCL to ActiveX, and be mindful of these concerns so that NaCL does not repeat some of the mistakes of ActiveX. [1] An older HN thread brought up some of these concerns: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2876282 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2876282 with naclbox.com.
jonpaul 14y ago
I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet, but it's my understanding that NaCl whitelists native instructions, whereas ActiveX is pure native that didn't run through any security hoops. Implication: NaCl is supposedly more secure.
- eckyptang 14y ago
  The technical merits are not really relevant to how bad the idea is. NaCl is technically superior but the entire idea is just bad.