
Flash, Silverlight, and JavaFX all look nice, but what I really want is better file upload - Sam_Odio
http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/05/flash-silverlight-and-javafx-all-look.html
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staunch
It's a mistake. Flash has ~99% penetration. This new plugin would have ~0%.
That's makes it absolutely useless. Paul is far better off sponsoring this as
a Firefox improvement (which would be copied by Safari and IE eventually).
Even lobbying Adobe to put this in the next Flash release is a better idea.
Creating a brand new plugin is a _big_ mistake.

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ralph
Is Flash penetration that high? Based on the few "Mum at home with laptop"
type people I know they're very wary of installing anything onto their Windows
XP machines and they don't know the latest Flash plugin is any different from
all the other things hammering to be installed.

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Tichy
Wouldn't it be better to fix the browser itself, ie contribute to FireFox? Or
is there a chance to get Mozilla to bundle the plugin by default?

What does it take to make a plugin universally available? So far only Flash
seems to have succeeded? It's not only the users at home that might lack the
technical skill, it is also the poor minions at the big corporations that
depend on their admins goodwill...

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budu3
I guess Paul wants it to be cross browser compatible so he's not tying it to
any browser implementation (i.e. firefox). But if he succeeds, browser vendors
will surely incoorperate this functionality into their browsers.

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Tichy
Of course universal browser support would be key. That poses the next
question: what is the chance to get Microsoft to bundle an Open Source plugin
with their browser?

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budu3
Microsoft will be liable to just re-implement it in their browser.

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wmorein
Are there any other browser limitations that might make sense to cover in this
plugin? Getting the distribution and the cross-platform functionality is the
challenge. Once you've done that, picking off a couple more browser annoyances
would be relatively straightforward.

Obviouly feature creep is a problem, but if you want this thing to be widely
out there picking off a couple more things might help others push it.

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budu3
I'm wondering which technology/platform is the best to implement this in?
Maybe Flex? I know it definately needs a javascript interface.

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paul
Here's one way to get funded: write this plugin

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ced
You mean, funding for someone's own project? Or for the plugin?

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paul
Once you have the money, spending it is really up to you :)

I'm willing to pay someone to write this, but I'd also be a lot more likely to
invest in a startup founded by that person (since they have proven that they
can execute, assuming that the plugin works).

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brlewis
What if the reason you're asking for this is to use it in a competing project?
Would you mind sharing your motivation for paying a lot?

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yaacovtp
Yup. "I'm serious about this, and willing to pay quite a bit of money to make
it happen."

