Unfortunately, that is not true of all environments. Many large
organizations such as governments and big corporations will not allow
their users to install ANY plugins to their browsers for security
reasons. A team of testers has to examine every piece of software
installed on the network and approve it. Getting variances for a
particular application is beyond most people's level of bureaucratic
tolerance. And since providing their employees access to sites like
Youtube is pretty low on these organizations' radar, a Flash player is
not something that it is easy to get passed as an accepted piece of
software unless they have purchased other software that requires it. And
THAT is unlikely because developing software for large organizations
that requires Flash causes this major friction point for sales. For
Flash, it is a vicious circle.
Given how much development is paid for by large organizations, I think
it unlikely any RIA technology will become dominant unless it is
embedded in something else. That means SilverLight embedded in the
browser with the most market share; JavaFX embedded in the JRE since
many of these organizations see Java as mission critical; or Ajax,
support for which is already embedded into existing browsers. Of these,
Ajax is the only technology that is currently generally available within
these large organizations.
Just thought I'd offer another perspective.
Grzegorz Kossakowski wrote:
I'm taking installation issues into consideration but if your application is
worth downloading and
installing some VM people will do it. As long as it's matter of one-click
installation people will
do it even if they will have to go for a five minutes break caused by download
size.
