Flash, Silverlight, and JavaFX all look nice, but what I really want is better file upload | Hacker News Reader

Flash, Silverlight, and JavaFX all look nice, but what I really want is better file upload

paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

25 pointsSam_Odio15 comments

It's a mistake. Flash has ~99% penetration. This new plugin would have ~0%. That's makes it absolutely useless. Paul is far better off sponsoring this as a Firefox improvement (which would be copied by Safari and IE eventually). Even lobbying Adobe to put this in the next Flash release is a better idea. Creating a brand new plugin is a big mistake.

Is Flash penetration that high? Based on the few "Mum at home with laptop" type people I know they're very wary of installing anything onto their Windows XP machines and they don't know the latest Flash plugin is any different from all the other things hammering to be installed.

Wouldn't it be better to fix the browser itself, ie contribute to FireFox? Or is there a chance to get Mozilla to bundle the plugin by default?

What does it take to make a plugin universally available? So far only Flash seems to have succeeded? It's not only the users at home that might lack the technical skill, it is also the poor minions at the big corporations that depend on their admins goodwill...

I guess Paul wants it to be cross browser compatible so he's not tying it to any browser implementation (i.e. firefox). But if he succeeds, browser vendors will surely incoorperate this functionality into their browsers.

Of course universal browser support would be key. That poses the next question: what is the chance to get Microsoft to bundle an Open Source plugin with their browser?

Microsoft will be liable to just re-implement it in their browser.

Are there any other browser limitations that might make sense to cover in this plugin? Getting the distribution and the cross-platform functionality is the challenge. Once you've done that, picking off a couple more browser annoyances would be relatively straightforward.

Obviouly feature creep is a problem, but if you want this thing to be widely out there picking off a couple more things might help others push it.

I'm wondering which technology/platform is the best to implement this in? Maybe Flex? I know it definately needs a javascript interface.

Here's one way to get funded: write this plugin

This is a great idea - I hope someone takes your offer and executes. We need this too.

You mean, funding for someone's own project? Or for the plugin?

Once you have the money, spending it is really up to you :)

I'm willing to pay someone to write this, but I'd also be a lot more likely to invest in a startup founded by that person (since they have proven that they can execute, assuming that the plugin works).

What if the reason you're asking for this is to use it in a competing project? Would you mind sharing your motivation for paying a lot?

How would creating such a plugin demonstrate important abilities that you would look for in founders? Many people have technical competence and many startup prototypes get rewritten after acquisition.

Yup. "I'm serious about this, and willing to pay quite a bit of money to make it happen."

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