[Techtalk] why is Active X in web pages evil, but not Perl/PHP/Javascript?

[Almut Behrens]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 01:43:10PM -0800, Kai MacTane wrote:
> At 1/20/05 01:06 PM , Almut Behrens wrote:
> >no, no, NO! ... I guess there's a huge misunderstanding! ;-)
> 
> It was quite obvious you considered it a nightmare scenario, and I suppose
> (...)
> The thing I disagree with is that you seemed (to me) to be painting it as a 
> scenario that might actually happen. I wanted to point out that the 
> possibility of this coming to pass looks (again, to me) to be so 
> exceedingly remote, I'm not even going to worry about it.

OK, thanks for the clarification!  I'm feeling considerably less
confused, now...

> 
> [reads back over the specifically quoted text above] I think I see the 
> problem. When I said "If you really, really *need* ActiveX...", I didn't 
> mean you _personally_.

yes, I really thought you meant _me_...

> 
> >Funny.  My impression was quite the opposite (that's why I posted this
> >rant in the first place...)  I originally very much liked the Firefox
> >project, but now, I have that vague feeling that at least some of the
> >developers would try to push Firefox at any price, just to attract a
> >large user base...   I can't really cite any threads or discussion
> >snippets, but all in all, that's the conclusion I've drawn from various
> >stuff I picked up on the Net, and from friends and collegues...
> 
> Ah, I think *this* is the real difference of opinion between us. (I 
> wouldn't even say "disagreement"; that's too strong a word.)
> 
> I do agree that some Firefox partisans would push it at any cost... you get 
> people like that in almost any movement. But I don't think many (if any) of 
> them are on the development team, and I think they're a distinct minority.

As I said, I wouldn't mind being wrong here.  What makes me wonder a
little: when I think about it, the majority of geeks in my immediate
vicinity kind of hold that (my) view.  Some of them even quit using
Firefox for that very reason, and switched back to Standard Mozilla.
Sure, certain inner-group coherence dynamics might have contributed to
that homogeneity, but I'd be surprised (in a statistical sense), if all
the rest of the world would hold a completely different view...
So, however wrong and subjective that perception may be - it might be
worth being fed back to Firefox's PR department :)

> 
> >Almut
> >(who'd never want to get labeled as an ActiveX advocate... <shudder>)
> 
> I did not for a moment, not in my wildest fancies, think you were 
> *advocating* the scenario you described.

Thank you :)  You'd honestly made me wondering ...
Well, I guess I should just sit back and relax, listen to some good
music, have a cup of coffee, and let things be as they are...

Almut