On Thu, 17 Jun 2010 11:46:11 +0200, Jan de Groot <jan@jgc.homeip.net> wrote:
I don't care much about performance, but what is irritating is that whenever some website loads anything flash-related, my CPU gets speedstepped to max frequency and my laptop fan prepares my laptop for a takeoff. When you're on battery, this can mean you'll lose half of battery runtime, just by having a browser window open that includes a flash banner. This isn't only a problem on x86_64, but on every non-windows platform. Maybe it extends to windows also, but I haven't tested that in years. Besides the performance problem, flash also makes browsers unstable. I'm very happy with the out-of-process plugins in Firefox 3.6.4 prereleases, it's just too bad that I don't use firefox for daily browsing.
I didn't like flash but kept it to play games occasionally (and yes, youtube a little, max 1 vid a day). Since it doesn't run on x86_64 and there isn't an easy way to install the 32bit version and make it work with Opera 10.6 beta, I dropped it. Opera 10.6 and Chrome 5 support WebM, so will Firefox 4, Opera 10.6 and Firefox 3 both support Ogg Theora, so yes I think the <video> tag is ready. IE is always slow on adopting new technologies so I can't see it as a serious browser (no matter if it has 50% market share). I forgot about Safari, well that is just a strange kid. Apple ports the browser to Windows and claims to have a cross platform browser, what about Linux? :-s On the codec side it doesn't support WebM nor Ogg Theora, a new IE6 if you ask me. For the games, <canvas> would be great, and indeed the Astroid game works smooth. I think I should open a topic on the forums with more of these games websites. I don't know how far the support for canvas is, but my default browser Opera 10.6 does. On the topic of open-source versus closed-source, I wont discus it. Both have advantages and disadvantages, I just prefer to use the software that just works (like Opera, WebM, Chromium, Firefox). Flash doesn't work for me, the same with IE and Safari. Youtube should really convert ALL there videos to WebM, old and new, it will become the standard in the next months. -- To read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Bottom-posting