BrowserPlus, from Yahoo! is an interesting new browser plug-in which allows developers to extend their web applications beyond the browser – to gain desktop-like capabilities. For example, the ability to drag and drop files.
I haven’t tried it – it looks useful. However, I’m concerned about the need for “yet another” browser plug-in. Flash and Silverlight need to add these features – to eliminate the need for this plug-in. I applaud their efforts on this work, but ….
The biggest trouble with something like this right now is unfortunately the fact that it comes from Yahoo! With their stock prices dropping like a rock, I’m not sure I’d jump on any technology from them that doesn’t involve open source.
This project can’t easily be opened sourced as it defeats the trust relationship that exists with consumers and Yahoo! Additionally, it prevents the spread of many variations of this same component.
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The concept behind this creation seems to have some merit, but one would think that most would be fine staying within the confines of a browser. The added drag-and-drop capability could provide some new applications, such as dropping an mp3 files straight to one’s desktop. An open-source version, as brought up in the article, may add the features of this program as an extension to Firefox