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Re: What are the arguments *for* XHTML 2.0?

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: What are the arguments *for* XHTML 2.0?
• From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
• Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 07:21:56 -0500
• In-reply-to: <35.309b8129.2b134cc3@a...>
• References: <35.309b8129.2b134cc3@a...>

At 4:52 AM -0500 11/25/02, AndrewWatt2000@a... wrote:


I REALLY hope I'm wrong and that SVG+XUL+XForms are where HTML was in 1994
or
so.  But the fact remains that if one were to deploy a rich client app in
Flash today, it
would run on something like 99% of the browsers out there.


I suspect you're vastly overestimating the penetration of Flash. I 
can assure you that it runs in maybe one of the browsers I use (and 
that one only on an occasional basis). I normally see broken plug-in 
icons on Flash sites. Occasionally I get annoyed with this, and 
figure out how to configure that browser to support Flash, which 
normally works for another month or two until an upgrade breaks 
everything. I admit I'm weird. I mostly use Linux and the Mac, and 
rarely use IE. Still, I see similar results among my mostly 
non-technical relatives.

I suspect there's a strong self-selection effect (the non-Flash 
capable don't go to Flash sites)  that tends to obscure just how bad 
the situation is. If you really want to research statistics instead 
of making them up, the first step is to throw away your browser logs. 
Instead randomly select people from the general population, and ask 
them if they're Internet users. If they are, look at their computer 
to see if it really can display Flash content. Do they have the 
plug-in? Is it properly installed? Can it play the latest version of 
Flash content? Do the security settings in the browser and the 
firewall allow Flash content through? I doubt it's worth anybody's 
time or money to do this study, but it's the only way to get a 
reliable answer. If somebody did do it, I suspect the results would 
be surprising, and very different from what browser logs indicate.
-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@m... | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
|          XML in a  Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002)          |
|              http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian2/              |
|  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0596002920/cafeaulaitA/  |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|  Read Cafe au Lait for Java News:  http://www.cafeaulait.org/      |
|  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/    |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+

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