der Mouse wrote:
> Of course, for something that amounts to "user comfort", user opinion
> is a perfectly valid reason to pick one thing over another.  I'm just
> pointing out that it *is* opinion, in no sense objective.

That might be slightly stretching the point. I am not an expert in
usability studies, but I know they exist, and it is possible to study
pretty much anything objectively if one is really interested in
learning something about it. Of course in anything like user comfort,
the results will be statistical, and there will be users whose mileage
will vary. Also, I doubt whether such studies can be worth much if
they do not distinguish users with different tasks and levels of
expertise. But the existence of variability does not rule out all
objective content.

> I guess I must not be using the Internet, then, since I'm not using any
> binary-only plug-ins or add-ons on my (NetBSD) boxen.

Lucky you - you probably haven't tried corresponding with my credit card
issuer to suggest providing their virtual-card feature without Flash. ;)
I would stop using theirs and use the same feature offered by my other
card, if that were less rife with browser specifics and broken Javascript
and if I had ever succeeded in seeing it work at all.

That's where things start to get serious: when outfits providing
necessary meatspace services see no reason not to rely on such goo,
and can't be persuaded otherwise.

-Chap