HTTP HTTPS

(my last two Facebook posts today – after Tweets on same ...)

How can a PRIVATE notebook on the web open in HTTP and not HTTPS ? But it did and does. Is this why we are to rely on Google and/or Microsoft ? The problem here is not "browser plugins" but something rather more obvious. SpringPad.

Death of the plugin ? SpringPad page in Firefox 13 web browser does not even know that I have their plugin running ! More like a plugin coma. Time for wake-up call? ( see SimpleNoteapp.com for alternative API ) Oh, death of the API's ? End of the programmer ? The End of design, too, I suppose ? Imagination dead. Imagine.

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Plugin Death

The end of Flash on this device or that OS is not the end of the browser plugin.

Those who have an interest in this plugin-death buzz also want their browser to become the OS or their OS to have a, err, plugin, err API-based component rendering HTML5 - ah hell, just have the OS based on HTML5 (call it HTML5-on-the-chip kinda-like LISP-on-a-CHIP, right ? Use the 5th core. Exclusively. Right.  First exit. To South Park.

The user without access to plugins is the dream consumer who cannot tell a computer screen from a TV or a real football game in progress from a simulation of the rained-out game. Or a Perl Parrot from a mature VM,

And also - those escort services at Vegas-style electronics shows -  they, too, will be an imagined thing of the past. Left. Any exit. Also to South Park.

We do apologize: anywhere in the above where we mentioned HTML5 as we meant HTML. This will be repaired when Ruby 1.9.4.01 becomes Ruby 2.1

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Kanji Recall

The "Henshall" kanji Curl applet at my kanji study pages now will remember where you were last in the set  -  at least as long as the Curl Surge RTE plugin is running ( a session cookie is being used.)  You can even change browsers from, say, Firefox, to Chrome, and Curl remembers which Kanji you were on.

If you have a request for different behavior or a different kanji set, then forward your request to infoATaule-browser.com where the "AT" is our @ mail symbol.

Note: the applet requires the MIT Curl browser plugin from curl.com or curlap.com

Curl has a forum at communities.curl.com

Pharo Smalltalk 1.2RC2

 
Over at pharo-project.org the next release of Pharo is almost ready.

I had some issues today trying to load a MetaCello configuration of O2 - the traits-compatible version of OmniBrowser - perhaps the build already has the latest O2 ?

I did manage to load Aida/Web into the Pharo image (a separate Aida image is also available as part of the continuous build process).

This comes after a few days of freeing my PC from an attack which appears to have come through having Java enabled in default IE (although the attack began in a new Google Chrome while I was in that browser.)  AVG, Ad-Aware and SpyBot were of no more help than Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool.  The real target appears to have been Firefox - but because I don't use it, that tampering was easier to detect in explorer alone.  A few bogus DLL's and many hidden files later I appear to have survived.  One casualty was my recent Google bookmarks.  Browser Helper Objects.  Yeah, right.

Rather than rant, this much was funny: Ad-Aware made some suggestions but also had a high-lighted "read more" which I clicked on in their application window - but it did not open a dialog - it opened IE with add-on's running!  Gee, thanks, folks ....

Tcl browser plugin v3 (from ActiveState)

There are some discrepancies in info about embedding Tcl/Tk since the change to plugin v3.

I tested against up-to-date Chrome, Opera, Safari, IE8, FireFox 3.5 and Amaya

My result is that given some script XYZ.tcl ONLY the following worked across all:

<OBJECT
ID="PluginHostCtrl"
CLASSID="CLSID:14E78123-A693-4F27-B6EE-DDDE18F93D3A"
WIDTH="400"
HEIGHT="220"
>
<PARAM name="type" value="application/x-tcl"/>
<PARAM name="pluginspage" value="http://www.tcl.tk/software/plugin/"/>
<PARAM name="src" value="XYZ.tcl"/>
</OBJECT>

Getting the plugin recognized by each browser was slightly problematic: IE 8 appeared to just ignore the XPI.

RIA Plugins: Curl Surge versus Adobe LiveScript/Flash/Apollo

This is just an IOU

If LiveScript/Flash is thought to be the answer for a browser-based commercial software project, then surely Curl must have been considered and eliminated. Likely not.

If a captive audience of cubicle domiciled users is to use plugin-Y, then there is at least a plugin-Z that merits consideration: the Surge plugin.

The Curl case is two-fold for RIA: the 'gentle slope' and the 'one-language-mastery' versus journeymen of many languages and apprentices in more.