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Previous: Scooter manual | Main | Next: Signage at Sydney Olympic Park
August 13, 2005 12:08 AM
Broken: Dell.com plugin promise
Dan Thomas points out this contradiction on the Dell website.
(The page in question is here.)
The yellow bar at the top is a message from Firefox not Dell..
it's tell you to download the plugin to display the flash that dell is telling you to download the same plugin for.. still hardly broken
Are you guys looking at the same picture? The one with "No Plug-in necessary" and "Click here to download plugin" circled in red?
The fact is, what Dell posted just isn't true. Kind of funny. It should just say 'Flash Plugin required'.
The site does not use Flash.
The site uses Java.
Whether or not Java is a plugin (particularly considering that it is, I believe, more widely supported than Flash, having been part of the base Windows and Mac OS installs for some time now) is debatable.
Temporal:
Java (in terms of embedded in a web page) is a plugin. As is Flash, as is Shockwave, etc. etc.
Definitely broken.
It's debated on whether or not it's a plugin. Some people say it's a plugin, but some people say it's a programming language like HTML or PHP. I think it's both.
In my opinion, people shouldn't use Java in webpages unless they absolutely have to.
Most of the time it takes too long to load and the same effect could be created using HTML and CSS correctly.
seems like they worded it for IE.. i missed the no plugin required page.. I think Java is installed by default in IE
Yeah, it means no plugin required for IE. This makes sense for the 90% of the world using IE. But for the 10% of us firefoxes, it's messed up.
The thing that is broken is that a plug-in is needed when dell says "no plug-in necessary"
it doesn't really matter what the plug-in is
and Seth Nelson should consider that nobody cares who's first next time he comments on something
PS:this would be funnier if dell pre-installed firefox on their computers
PPS: go firefox!
In a way it's kind of scary that 90% of the world STILL uses IE. I don't mean to offend anybody, but think about it. The internet is ALWAYS progressing. Advertisers are thinking of new ways to annoy you, each better than the last. And yet, Microsoft seems to have forgotten about IE. It hasn't had an update in years. Micosoft still endorses it, but we are using a browser that might have been fine in 2000, but now is almost obsolete. I could go on and on, but I won't. That's all I have to say. Thank you.
"Most of the time it takes too long to load and the same effect could be created using HTML and CSS correctly."
Well.. in this case it's not like you can create an interactive 360º view of a laptop using HTML and CSS correctly :-/
Guido:
Actually, you could program this in HTML/CSS using Javascript. You would just need to have it monitor mouse movements and replace the image with different angles respectively. Similar to how Google Maps works. The thing is, though, it would be prohibitively complicated to create this effect.
Everyone else:
How could this not be broken? This is doing the 100% total OPPOSITE effect of what is originally stated.
Also, I don't think this means "no plugin required for IE" because all new installations of XP (post SP1) no longer include Java, due to a Sun/Microsoft lawsuit. I think it's trying to say "no plug-in required for most users, because most users have Java, and we're not going to require you to install some X-brand 360º software." I just fails at stating that.
What's broken is that it requires Java to open the link. I mean, how hard is it to put a link in plain HTML? Oh, wait...
This easy.
Actualy, if Java is on a Windows PC before firefox is installed (I think that either some kind of Microsoft Java VM comes with Windows, or most PC makers pre-install Java), then Firefox will use it. That screenshot came from a Linux computer, from the look of the title bar, and not all Linux distributions install Java by default. Dell might not have anticipated that situation, but the 360 demo does require a program other than the browser to view, and is, hence, broken.
Actually, that is windows. The person is just using a customized theme (Luna Olivia, if I'd have to guess).
Look more closely. With the window border and the look of the button, that is most likely the GNOME desktop.
Actually, it IS Windows. I meant to say that the customized theme is "Watercolor" which Microsoft created, and was going to be the default theme for XP. Before they released XP, though, the decided to change the theme to what it is now.
Don't believe me? Here's an image:
The javascript to open the window is broken. The javascript is duplicated.
It says: javascript:winopen('javascript:winopen('http://www.dell.com/html/emea/virtualtours/latitude/x1/index.html','popup450x600','WIDTH=650,HEIGHT=450,RESIZABLE=NO,SCROLLBARS=NO,TOOLBAR=NO,LEFT=0,TOP=20');','popup450x600','WIDTH=650,HEIGHT=450,RESIZABLE=NO,SCROLLBARS=NO,TOOLBAR=NO,LEFT=0,TOP=20');
If it won't work (it didn't for me), just put this in:
http://www.dell.com/html/emea/virtualtours/latitude/x1/index.html
bob said:
if you post a continuous string of charcters, the page width grows to accomodate them.
so matt is broken? heh just kidding
NOT Broken @ all, y? It's because Dell designed it's page for IE, and IE doesn't need the plugin.
Firefox does, so it's ur fault.
gnutux
But they didn't say, "No plugin required for IE users." They said "No plugin required,"
implying that that applied universally.
It's not even techincally borken anymore, due to the fact that they don't claim that it is plugin free.
Comments on this entry are closed
Previous: Scooter manual | Main | Next: Signage at Sydney Olympic Park
How is that broken? just because you didn't install the flash plugin for mozilla? sorry.. not broken here.. also in my experience the dell website seems to be 1 of those that behaves better with IE..
Posted by: infinity at August 13, 2005 01:16 AM