I hate 'em.

I didn't like OLE. I didn't like the stuff that followed it: DDE and ActiveX. I don't like embedded browser plugins.

The basic problem is that application controls are specific to an application and its tasks. Dropping one app in another allows some neat tricks, but fundamentally breaks and distorts the UI in ways which I find little other than annoying. It also encourages designs which make cross-platform or browser-independent support difficult.

The places I see plugin useage typically strike me as gratuitous. Then again, I may be missing some.... The most often is PDFs. In my case, I'll launch a PDF with an external veiwer. Controls work. I can continue surfing in my browser. I can view the file in the application of my choosing -- usually xpdf, sometime gv (more intuitive paging, no cut-n-paste), or even console (much better text search & positioning). There's [link|http://www.freesklyarov.org/|Adobe]'s reader, which is crap for any number of reasons from technical to ethical. Other uses -- Flash (evil and [link|http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001029.html|bad]), which would benefit greatly by a standalone player for the rare instance in which a humorous or informational Flash presentation is present. The fact that you can't control whether or not Flash plays itself is a huge UI fault, and leads to gratuitous abuse, particularly in advertising. It's the main reason I disable it entirely -- if I had the option to selectively enable it, the problem wouldn't be nearly so bad (and this is a feature available in the Epiphany browser).

Other uses -- place I was at was using Microsoft's answer to Wiki, sharepoint. Application formats -- MS Word docs, MS Excel files, etc., would open in browser. Fucking annoying IMO. Open that crap in the app it's supposed to be in, leave my browser alone. Never figured out how to disable the behavior. I suspect it's part of MSFT's lock-in scheme.

So frankly, while I don't like patents, I'd love to see plug-ins die.

And if Microsoft wants to argue that applications are no longer standaloe, well, there's [link|http://www.microsoft-antitrust.gov/|a place you can mention the word "tying"] apropos their compliance with the DoJ settlement.

The counterargument to plugins in all their forms, if I understand correctly, is that they allow quick-and-dirty appliation development in which functionality can be added to one application by borrowing bits of another. What results is a chimera, neither beast nor bird nor fish, constantly out of its spots, not of a feather, and out of water.

The correct solution (in the context of web apps) is a universal, rapid, secure, networked application development framework, which provides the basic capabilities people are looking for. And of couse, this is the holy grail which has seen so many attempts at provision: VB, Smalltalk, Java, .Net.... The problem in all cases is what I see as the proprietary appliation development model's Achilles heel: vendors are not willing to tive up any control or loss of lock-in ptential in the name of inreased developer and end-user flexibility. It's here that free software offers one compelling advantage: there is no vendor control, and no lock-in to protect. This is evident in such utilities as mod-perl (Perl embedded into the Apache web browser as a module), cross-embedding of Python and Perl within the opposite's language, ubiquitous and largely uniform use (at least within definitions) of regular expression syntax, embedding of Emacs "readline" editing into a wide range of tools, etc., etc., etc. Propriety, in this case, simply gets in the way.