RR as a browser plugin?

[Alex Rice]

On Feb 11, 2004, at 12:37 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> Browser plugins offer no substanial benefit not already addressed by 
> using a
> standalone as a helper application.

I too am a fan of "web enabled standalone apps" as an alternative to 
plugins. And I have read and appreciated your article about it. But you 
are making quite a blanket statement there. Why be so quick to dismiss 
the browser plugin which could be a good thing for some Runrev 
developers, even if you aren't interested yourself?

A wide variety of browser plugins do exist and are beneficial for many 
organizations and businesses. Do a search for +GIS +"browser plugin". 
All kinds of plugins come up, most of which is foreign to me: SVG, WML, 
ExpressView, AlternaTIFF, GeoTIFF, DXF, MrSID, ACGM, Geo-DB, WxScope 
and on and on. You know there are organizations that need and pay for 
those browser plugins. Probably a lot of them could have been written 
with Runrev. Maybe the companies considered standalone apps, and 
decided in favor of browser plugins. There are all kinds of possible 
scenarios.

re: installed-base and walking over to the secretary's computer and 
your scenarios you were talking about: in larger companies with 
carefully tied down desktop and laptop configs, getting a browser 
plugin pre-installed is not a problem. Large IT departments ghost their 
disk images and roll-em out like a factory!

--
Alex Rice | Mindlube Software | http://mindlube.com