On Jan 17, 2009, at 11:24 AM, Ray Davison wrote:
> You may have overlooked one dependency, not of the functional type you
> listed but an add-on necessary for a browser to be usable today:
> Flash.
I disagree.
Flash may be everywhere, but I'd hardly call it an essential browser
component.
I don't have flash in my browser (by choice) and there's very little
that I can't access due to lack of flash support.
Admittedly, a lot of the meeting sites and some of the classroom
software requires flash to operate properly, but it's hardly a
requirement for 90 percent of browser users.
Generally, on web sites that have flash content, the conent itself is
simply some silly animation that adds nothing to the page, or it's
some scrolling version of the entir web page, which in my opinion is a
waste of both bandwidth and resources.
Needless to say, I avoid such sites, and as a result, the requirements
for flash capable browsing is nearly 0.
(note I say nearly)
And, for those sites where it is required for obtaining actual useful
information, I would have no problem moving to another machine/oos for
the job.
Until flash actually gets used for value added content, it's inclusion
in a web browser is by no means obligatory.
Now, java script might be useful to include, though as with flash, a
great deal of the javascript content is simply garbage that the page
would be better without, or someone uses javascript to generate the
html (another waste of resources imo) especially when the javascript
does nothing but a bunch of document.writeln('<html><body></body></
html'); type things, with no dynamic content at all.
Admittedly, these kinds of pages are (thankfully) growing less as
folks actually realize javascript can be used for useful things, and
not just to make a page look fancy when it isn't, but a browser
probably should include at least some support for it.
But, since javascript has been thoroughly documented, adding support
shouldn't be that big of a problem, whereas flash is nearly impossible
to get specs on, and adding it to a dos--based browser would be no
trivial task, even if it were necessary for generic browsing (which,
it isn't)
Of course, anyone is entitled to tell me how wrong they believe me to
be, and I'll of course listen, but unless someone can prove to me the
web can't get along w/o flash, it's not likely anyone will change my
opinions on this particular topic.
Anyway, that's my take on it.
>
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