Dolphin applets and Internet Explorer

Folks,

Internet Explorer 6 (and it turns out 5.5 SP2) has now been released and, as
has been rumoured for the last few weeks, does not include support for
Netscape style plug-ins. This means that Dolphin applets will no longer run
on any of the up-to-date versions of IE.

It is our opinion that Microsoft has behave reprehensibly in this situation.
Their reason for removing the support is not known. It could possibly be due
to patent problems (as detailed in Bill Schwab's post from a couple of weeks
back) or it could be a monopolistic attempt to remove competition from their
own ActiveX and future .NET component strategies. Whatever the reason,
however, we believe they have not given adequate support or forewarning to
their developers. Most resposonsible companies would deprecate a facility
for at least one full release before removing it entirely. As a minimum
there would be an official announcement of such a serious change several
months in advance to allow their developer base to schedule and implement
changes. We have written to Microsoft to voice this opinion  and part of the
contents of the letter are reproduced at the bottom of this message.

The question is now how to best resurrect support for Dolphin applets within
Internet Explorer. There appear to be two possiblities. The first is to
rewrite a large part of the plugin VM with support for ActiveX placement
within the browser. This is not a trivial exercise. We would also want to
make sure that such ActiveX components can correctly work inside other
browsers such as Netscape since we have no desire to support two code bases.
The second possibility is that a third party may write an ActiveX plugin
support wrapper that would allow Netscape style plugins to run in an ActiveX
environment although, it must be said that, we have no information about
anyone working in this direction at present.

For the time being our response has, regrettably, to be to encourage Dolphin
applet users to use the Netscape (or other plugin compliant) browser rather
than Internet Explorer. We are coming close to a release of the next version
of Dolphin (version 5.0) and there simply isn't time to port the plugin over
to ActiveX before this comes about. It is our intention to take a look at
such a port in the future but we cannot, at this point, guarantee a date
when this work might be completed.

On behalf of Object Arts, I apologize for the inconvenience that this will
inevitably cause. However, we believe that Microsoft are at fault here and
not ourselves and we would encourage any of our users who are of the same
mind to write, expressing your distaste, to:

Microsoft Corporation
Attn: Customer Advocate Center
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
USA

Below follows part of our letter of complain to Microsoft on the subject.

Best Regards,

Andy Bower
Object Arts Ltd.
http://www.object-arts.com
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<snip>

I wish to register a formal complaint regarding Microsoft's
behaviour surrounding the new Internet Explorer 6 release. In particular
we are concerned about the quiet removal of support for Netscape
plugins/Embed tags within HTML pages.

Our company markets a product that makes use of this facility and from,
our end as a small company, the automatic assumption by Microsoft that
companies such as ours can afford the immediate development resources to
adapt their products to use alternative technologies such as ActiveX or
.NET seems unreasonable.

We have received no formal notice of the removal of this support and no
grace period to allow us time to re-engineer our product. Indeed, in the
early betas of Windows XP the plugin support was available in IE6 only
to be removed in the first release candidate of the product. Most
responsible companies, when deciding to remove a key component, would
first deprecate it and then allow one entire release cycle for their
developers to reimplement their software.

In this situation, at best, Microsoft can be seen as being irresponsible
and indifferent to the needs of their developer base. At worst, this
could be construed as another monopolistic practice deliberately aimed
to blight a competing technology such as our Smalltalk embedded applets
in favour of the Microsoft equivalent.

<snip>

Yours faithfully,

A.W.Bower
Managing Director
Object Arts Ltd.
http://www.object-arts.com

"Andy Bower" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:9ni9s9$7hshn$[hidden email]...
> Folks,

This is rather bad development. While I understand  that you have been put
in this position without your own will or guilt, I would be very happy if
you could consider finding an solution for this problem on a higher priority
than you have described. If you do so, you will help your customers to
transition their soulutions more smoothly, and that will help to improve
your image of tools producer that can be relied upon in medium and longer
term (even when it is not you who is responsible). Also if there is some way
we (the OA customers) could ease your decission to go ahead sooner than
latter (like some order commitments or preordering), please let us know. But
let me say it again, I do not think the whole math is "number of licences
divided by develpment cost", since I believe there is more to it.

In the mean time, it would be very helpfull if you could actively observe
all developments regarding the plugin support, and bring to our notion if
some other solution (like that active-x plugin host, or MS backtracking) or
important development appears.

Sincerely, and looking forward to your new products,

Davorin Rusevljan

Frank,

> How many people DO use the web plug-in?

I had a few problems early on and so didn't get hooked.  The most noteworthy
problem (STB related) was probably a locator problem (setting one would
might have fixed it).  Beyond that, I had some concerns about differences in
fonts between ordinary Dolphin apps and applets.  Ordinarily I wouldn't care
too much, but, the gizmo that would have been a natural applet for me has a
pretty complicated UI with tabbed dialogs that would have required some
resizing to work in a browser.

--------------------------
My impression is that it was important to demonstate that Smalltalk can do
applets too when Java introduced the idea. But since Java on the client is
dead, is it really necessary to compete in that area?
--------------------------

Java dead on the client???  I spilled coffee on my keyboard just yesterday
:)



--------------------------
I see a lot of ActiveX component in web pages. One major concern I always
had
with the web plug-in was that a user had to install it first. I personally
never install any of the Flash, Shockwave and whatever plugins. If a site
uses
such specific stuff I surf away.

Would that ActiveX plugin support wrapper allow for Dolphin applets
"without"
installation?
That would be an advantage.
--------------------------

That brings me to my most serious concern about the plugin, even if MS
hadn't yanked the rug out from under us: what happens if one of my users
installs one of _your_ applets and ends up getting a newer plugin out of
it - my applet might break because there's no binding of the applet to the
particular VM version that it expects.  IMHO, that needs to be fixed before
the technology can be considered robust.  I'd like to see the (well, we'll
probably have to come up with another name) plugin survive and grow, because
I have another application for it; but, that would have to be bullet proof
with respect to versioning.

Have a good one,

Bill

--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]

Hi,

there may be a way out.

There was a VSE4WEB package on the Sugar website.
It consists of an Automation-Server and uses a small ActiveX wrapper which
acts as a proxy and sends all messages to the VSE Automation Server,
which sits in a different process.

The important thing - the Window-Handle from the ActiveX wrapper can be used
in the Smalltalk-Automation-Server.

We used this technique as a template for our LSWVST ActiveX control
framework years ago.

Frank, www.lesser-software.com

Hi,

there may be a way out.

There was a VSE4WEB package on the Sugar website.
It consists of an Automation-Server and uses a small ActiveX wrapper which
acts as a proxy and sends all messages to the VSE Automation Server,
which sits in a different process.

The important thing - the Window-Handle from the ActiveX wrapper can be used
in the Smalltalk-Automation-Server.

We used this technique as a template for our LSWVST ActiveX control
framework years ago.

Frank, www.lesser-software.com

We would have to agree with Davorin.  Our product (http://www.ripclip.com)
is currently being deployed as a Dolphin applet, and we have about
1000 users.  We have been very happy with Dolphin Smalltalk and
find it extremely productive.  We are definitely interested in continuing
to use Dolphin Smalltalk.

Although Microsoft has behaved irresponsibly, we still
need a solution (or workaround) to get our product running in IE6.0
(we've already received questions from a couple of users about IE 6.0
and have told them to wait or revert to a pervious version of IE).

As a workaround, it is possible to deploy a Dolphin application as
an activeX component that would work in IE 6.0?  Would this be
a straight-forward task?  (We're not too familiar with activeX
technology).


Support
Kevlex Technologies Inc.
[hidden email]

Davorin Rusevljan wrote:

>How many people DO use the web plug-in?

Maybe the number of licences is not that large, but I would not be suprised
to find larger vested intest behind such licences than normal ones. At the
ZSE we are using it for real-time price feed from the exchange to the
investors. Having an applet is good for us since we can give to brokers same
thing and they wrap it into their own web pages, while the exchange actually
provides the feed behind the scenes.

Now we can advise customers to downgrade their browser but I suspect many of
them would find this acceptable. Other thing we may be forced to do is
provide a standalone application, but with that brokers loose option to
provide their added value, and hence it is not favourable by them. We may
consider doing things other way around, embeding a browser within the
application for the same added value purpose, but it is non trivial to
switch the business behind the whole thing.

So, as I sad it is not good news.

Davorin Rusevljan

Andy and fellow Dolphin Smalltalkers,

While this is certainly a serious situation, I believe noone in the Dolphin Smalltalk
community wants Object-Arts or anyone  to take a serious misstep in a not-well-thought-through
or hasty attempt to recover from the blow.  With small resources the cost of
missteps are more readily significant and harmful.

Object-Arts is hardly the only company whose plans have been upset by
this change in support.  For instance, Brio Technology, a provider of OLAP
technology and similar services, has a Web portal which is Netscape plugin-based
and, so, simply won't work with the latest IE.  While I'm sure they are madly
running around pursuing a solution, their policy in the meantime is to advise
clients running IE to simply not upgrade to IE 6 from IE 5 or to use
Netscape or compatible browsers as an interim step.

While surely keeping one's enterprise plans in sync with a dominant industry
force is the Way To Be for the long term, embracing an incompatible browser
like IE 6 is, to some extent, foolishness.  Who is the vendor and who is
the client here?  Surely, there'll be an answer for this problem developing
soon.  Surely, there is a huge financial incentive to any company that can
provide such a bridge and have it be reliable.

Meanwhile, I say give Andy and everyone some time.

Thanks for listening....

  --Jan


On Mon, 10 Sep 2001 12:57:58 +0100, "Andy Bower" <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Folks,
>
> Internet Explorer 6 (and it turns out 5.5 SP2) has now been released and, as
> has been rumoured for the last few weeks, does not include support for
> Netscape style plug-ins. This means that Dolphin applets will no longer run
> on any of the up-to-date versions of IE.
>
> It is our opinion that Microsoft has behave reprehensibly in this situation.

[snip]

>................................................................................ Whatever the reason,
> however, we believe they have not given adequate support or forewarning to
> their developers. Most resposonsible companies would deprecate a facility
> for at least one full release before removing it entirely. As a minimum
> there would be an official announcement of such a serious change several
> months in advance to allow their developer base to schedule and implement
> changes.

[snip]

> The question is now how to best resurrect support for Dolphin applets within
> Internet Explorer.

[snip]

>
> For the time being our response has, regrettably, to be to encourage Dolphin
> applet users to use the Netscape (or other plugin compliant) browser rather
> than Internet Explorer. We are coming close to a release of the next version
> of Dolphin (version 5.0) and there simply isn't time to port the plugin over
> to ActiveX before this comes about. It is our intention to take a look at
> such a port in the future but we cannot, at this point, guarantee a date
> when this work might be completed.



[snip]

Andy,

> It is our opinion that Microsoft has behave reprehensibly in this
situation.

Too right.

What gets me is that Microsoft's f*cking around will end up taking your time
away from development that is actually of use to someone (e.g. me) and
directing it to whatever technical workaround is eventually chosen.  The
time that OA spends will add nothing of value to OA, or to me, or to any
other user, it will just be time contributed free (extorted is a better
word) to helping-out with Microsoft's stategic political/commercial
manoeverings.

I'm with Jan in suggesting that you hold off making a decision for a while
(I'm trying to think of a reason why M$ might want to be *seen to be* in a
position where they are "forced" to support Netscape-style plug-ins, which
is the end result that I suspect they are playing for).

OTOH, how hard would it be to create a standalone image which worked the
same way as the plug-in except that it wasn't run from the browser ?  It
*sounds* quite easy (i.e. easy enough that it wouldn't require OA to do it).
Then people with plugin-based users would be able to say:

    'Sigh...  You had to do it didn't you?  Haven't you learned yet that
    "upgrading" IE always breaks *something*?  Don't you think it's a
    little unprofessional to screw around with the tools that earn your
    living?  Well, OK then, if you don't want to downgrade (or don't
    know how), then you'll have to use <this program> instead.  It'll be
    less convenient for you because it doesn't run in the browser, but
    that's your problem mate"

(as you can see, I'd make a great sysadmin -- dripping with sympathy)

    -- chris

Squeak also has a plugin of some sort. I wonder if that is also going
to break.

Hello all,

> Squeak also has a plugin of some sort. I wonder if that is also going
> to break.

They do, and it will.  There was a little chatter about it a while ago, but,
I don't recall seeing anything recent.  I never did see what I considered a
clear decision for how Squeak Central will respond, but, this might be
relevant:

   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/squeak/message/31415

Perhaps OA can work with Andreas to get an ActiveX control working.  While
there would be obvious advantages to implementing all of the visual control
stuff in Dolphin itself, it would take time.  I'm assuming that a joint
ActiveX/plugin gizmo would be written in C++.

While looking for something more definite on the plans for Squeak, I ran
across this:

   http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6455783.html
   http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6352301.html

Have a good one,

Bill

--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]

Is there anything that prevents using Netscape or Opera for the Dolphin
plug-in? If so, it seems counter productive to help Microsoft with their
ploy. When people dump Internet Explorer in favor of browsers that
actually work with the web, maybe they will become better citizens.

I have to agree with Jan here. If Microsoft doesn't fix their blunder,
someone else will. Object-Arts is doing better things with their time.

Brian Murphy-Dye.

Jan Theodore Galkowski wrote:

"Andy Bower" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:9ni9s9$7hshn$[hidden email]...

> Internet Explorer 6 (and it turns out 5.5 SP2) has now been released and,
as
> has been rumoured for the last few weeks, does not include support for
> Netscape style plug-ins. This means that Dolphin applets will no longer
run
> on any of the up-to-date versions of IE.

> It is our opinion that Microsoft has behave reprehensibly in this
situation.

If we lie with dogs, we're gonna get fleas.  Bill and Steve have been trying
to warn you not to trust Microsoft.  I, myself, might have dropped the
occasional tiny hint that I am not a 100% Microsoft fan, even though, as you
know, I do my best to hide the fact.

More seriously, I agree with Brian and Jan and Chris.  Less seriously, Chris
gets my vote for SysAdmin of the year!


-- Frank
[hidden email]
I'm not part of the solution; I'm part of the problem.

Andy Bower wrote:

> Internet Explorer 6 (and it turns out 5.5 SP2) has now been released and, as
> has been rumoured for the last few weeks, does not include support for
> Netscape style plug-ins. This means that Dolphin applets will no longer run on
> any of the up-to-date versions of IE. ...

Here's my wish-list:

1. Object-Arts takes the open-source Mozilla browser, and packages it together
with 1.1) Dolphin VM  1.2) Sun's Java plugin.

2. Object-Arts makes this Smalltalk-powered, ready-to-run browser available for
free, as a viable  alternative to IExplorer6 (which doesn't support Java either)

3. Many  more programmers will then take up the task of writing applets in
Smalltalk rather than in Java,

4. Dolphin Smalltalk gets some much needed press in the process: "A new
alternative to Microsoft *and* JavaSoft !".  O-A will sell IDEs like hotcakes,
thus financing its continual development.

The one issue I see with the above is that Dolphin-plugin offers no security
sand-box. How difficult would it be to add it ?

-Panu


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Panu Viljamaa <[hidden email]> wrote in news:[hidden email]:

> 2. Object-Arts makes this Smalltalk-powered, ready-to-run browser
> available for free, as a viable  alternative to IExplorer6 (which
> doesn't support Java either)

Bundling doesn't make it Smalltalk powered.

Yes it does. It just doesn't ship with Java. Installing Sun Java or
upgrading from 5.5 works just fine.

> 3. Many  more programmers will then take up the task of writing applets
> in Smalltalk rather than in Java,

This would be the FlyingPig browser, presumably.

There's no point in Object Arts picking a fight with MS. They'll just lose.

P.

Panu,

> 1. Object-Arts takes the open-source Mozilla browser, and packages it
together
> with 1.1) Dolphin VM  1.2) Sun's Java plugin.
>
> 2. Object-Arts makes this Smalltalk-powered, ready-to-run browser
available for
> free, as a viable  alternative to IExplorer6 (which doesn't support Java
either)

That's fine for us, but, what about the would-be user base?  Many potential
users wouldn't be able to start the browser of their choice (they'lll get
the default) if they even bothered to install it.  I respectfully submit
that you're attacking the problem from the wrong direction.


> 3. Many  more programmers will then take up the task of writing applets in
> Smalltalk rather than in Java,

While I wish that were true, I fear that they will instead start writing
them in C#, until the _next_ hyped language comes along.  I think we'll do
better to lead by example.  While everybody else is rewriting their code in
the latest hypeware, we'll be refining our existing apps and writing new
ones.

Have a good one,

Bill

--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]