[]Join Webmonkey, it's free. Members log in.
[Luke's mug] [Luke Knowland]
[Plug-Ins] [Plug-In Pack]

Plug-Ins: Why Bother?
[]
[Imagemap]

A while back, someone told me that by the end of '96 there would be 500 necessary plug-ins. I laughed. Not at the "500 plug-ins" part; at the necessary part.

What with Netscape offering up a plug-in SDK (software developer's kit), everyone and her brother will be creating a plug-in that you'll need in order to see her homepage. You'll never use it anywhere else, mind you, but it'll be indispensable in this one instance. Super. Just what we all need - a little more nonstandardization on the Web.

This isn't to say that the current "standard" is the end-all-be-all. But hey, a plug-in is supposed to make the Web more useful; it seems logical that it should have more than one application. And that it should work. And that the developers tool should use standard file formats. Is that so much to ask?

Apparently so. The operative phrase of the day is "reinventing the wheel." There are more than 70 plug-ins on Netscape's Inline Plug-Ins pages alone, and most of them do exactly the same thing (either nothing, or crash your machine). Now this isn't to say there aren't any good plug-ins out there (there are). And this isn't to say that no one could develop a better plug-in than what's currently available (I'm quite sure someone could).

So what am I saying? What kind of plug-in column is this? No rating system? No call to arms? No mandate to rush out and start surfing the promised waters of tomorrow's virtual worlds?

What makes

a plug-in

essential?

Threads

Nope.

Bottom line is there are a lot of plug-ins out there, and most of them aren't worth your time. And that's where we come in.

Our mission is to help you narrow the growing list of plug-ins down to a manageable, quality few. To sort out which are useful, which need a little more work, and which you can write off altogether. Every Tuesday, we'll bring you the lowdown on up-and-coming plug-ins, and what could be done intelligently with them. We'll talk about good and bad usage (good = enhanced pages; bad = three-finger salute), and generally try to make sense of it all.

Above all, we'll be answering the age-old question: "Why Bother?"

But I can't promise there'll always be a reason....

[Archive]


Luke Knowland is associate producer of Webmonkey. He is not a menace to society no matter what anybody says.


Previously in Plugins ...

HOMESEARCH
HELP

Copyright © 1996 HotWired, Inc. All rights reserved.