Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 09:19:29 +0200 From: Jonathan McKeown <jonathan+freebsd-questions@hst.org.za> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: what happened to linuxflashplugin? Message-ID: <200802140919.29899.jonathan%2Bfreebsd-questions@hst.org.za> In-Reply-To: <20080213221453.GA7159@aleph.cepheid.org> References: <47AFC80B.8090303@gmail.com> <20080213163421.165aaf84@scorpio> <20080213221453.GA7159@aleph.cepheid.org>
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On Thursday 14 February 2008 00:14, Erik Osterholm wrote: > > IMHO, for an individual to state that Flash is not a relevant issue > > simply because they choose not to employ it, is similar to patient > > claiming that cancer research is a waste of time simply because they > > are not afflicted with the condition. > > Bad analogies are like a leaky screwdriver. > > All throughout this thread, there have been people mixing up issues. > It's true that Flash is used on many, many websites, but one of the > earliest "complaints" I saw regarded Flash-only sites--sites which > require Flash in order to navigate. These sites seem fairly rare. It > is manipulative and misleading to argue that because so many sites > /make use of Flash/, then /Flash has become an integral part of the > web/. I browse with Flash disabled all of the time, only enabling it > specifically when I need it to use the web site. It certainly > happens--but it's not a constant thing. I'm aware that Flash content > exists on the pages I view, but most of the time it's supplemental, > and the page degrades quite nicely without it. This is the best summary of the issues I've seen in this thread. One last time, because we're going round in circles: I don't have a problem with people putting in the effort to get Flash working: I'd be even happier if Adobe would do it themselves; but there's not much that Flash is essential for, and to claim that ``half the entire Web'' is unusable without Flash, seems somewhat overstated. There are many sites which degrade, more or less gracefully, in the absence of Flash, but, like Erik, I don't come across many that are completely unusable. In fact, browsing with Konqueror, I have more problem with Java, faulty Javascript and AJAX than with Flash. I still haven't seen any comeback on the accessibility issue: is it really the case that banks in the USA (for example) have websites that are not accessible to a section of the population, and that this isn't covered by the ADA? (I'm not trying to score points here: I'm genuinely interested). Jonathan
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