On 1/19/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Jonathan Daugherty</b> <<a href="mailto:cygnus@janrain.com">cygnus@janrain.com</a>> wrote:<div><span class="gmail_quote"></span>># OTOH, I think this religious attitude that says browser plugins
<br>># are to be avoided at all costs is wrong-headed.<br>> The attitude is the result of many of us admitting that firefox-using,<br>> plugin-using users are a minority within a minority and that the <br>>"just use a plug-in!" push ignores that fact.
<br></div><br>It is amazing what marketing can accomplish and solving this problem will require serious marketing as well as technology. Today, millions of people who have no idea what a "virus blocker" does, have the things installed -- because they have been taught that they need one. They don't know why and don't care. They only know that they must have one. Similarly, one can imagine a world in which we teach the huddled-masses that they are idiots if they run a machine that doesn't have OpenID (client-side protection) installed... (Note: This is a very different message than: "Plug-ins are cool and do neat things for you..." When a plug-in is marketed as *required*, not merely "good," it will have a different adoption curve.)
<br><br>We need, I think, to realize that in many application areas we've overrun the capability of today's most commonly used browser to support development of the applications we need. The virtual end of innovation that has resulted from monopolization of the browser market makes it impossible to hope for advancements in the most commonly used browser. Instead, what we see are effort like CardSpace, which layer proprietary technologies into an operating system -- with the clear goal of making that operating system preferred -- rather than openly defined innovations that enhance the entire infrastructure.
<br><br>It appears to me that a plug-in is the next best thing to having the necessary intelligence built into the browser. Thus, things like Sxipper +OpenID are probably the best we can do (and that ain't bad...) until we can convince the browser developers to do what we require rather than just what addresses their own needs.
<br><br>bob wyman<br><br>