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August 13, 2005 12:08 AM

Broken: Dell.com plugin promise

Dell_sDan Thomas points out this contradiction on the Dell website.

(The page in question is here.)

Comments:

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

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

Posted by: infinity at August 13, 2005 01:18 AM

Are you guys looking at the same picture? The one with "No Plug-in necessary" and "Click here to download plugin" circled in red?

Posted by: josh at August 13, 2005 02:02 AM

The fact is, what Dell posted just isn't true. Kind of funny. It should just say 'Flash Plugin required'.

Posted by: Jesse at August 13, 2005 03:04 AM

AUTHOR: Firefox
EMAIL: firefox@firefox.com
IP: 198.144.208.90
URL:
DATE: 08/13/2005 04:04:46 AM

Posted by: Firefox at August 13, 2005 04:04 AM

U took out the image tag:(

Posted by: firefox at August 13, 2005 04:07 AM

For those that think Flash isn't a plug in, wake up!!! It's broken.

Posted by: ross. at August 13, 2005 04:33 AM

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.

Posted by: Temporal at August 13, 2005 05:54 AM

O well. Dell made a mistake.

Posted by: Bob at August 13, 2005 07:48 AM

Temporal:

Java (in terms of embedded in a web page) is a plugin. As is Flash, as is Shockwave, etc. etc.

Definitely broken.

Posted by: Isaac at August 13, 2005 08:33 AM

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.

Posted by: Fayth at August 13, 2005 01:40 PM

It's a programming language that requires a plugin to display in a browser.

Posted by: Ben Wilhelm at August 13, 2005 02:03 PM

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.

Posted by: Eric at August 13, 2005 02:15 PM

seems like they worded it for IE.. i missed the no plugin required page.. I think Java is installed by default in IE

Posted by: infinity at August 13, 2005 03:16 PM

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.

Posted by: cheeseburger at August 13, 2005 03:44 PM

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!

Posted by: john russell at August 13, 2005 03:50 PM

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.

Posted by: djbjrca at August 13, 2005 04:48 PM

"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 :-/

Posted by: Guido at August 13, 2005 05:09 PM

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.

Posted by: Chris B at August 13, 2005 06:16 PM

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.

Posted by: Jello B. at August 13, 2005 11:30 PM

i think someone needs to get seth some ritalin. =D

Posted by: ambrocked at August 14, 2005 06:22 PM

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.

Posted by: Adam at August 14, 2005 07:38 PM

Actually, that is windows. The person is just using a customized theme (Luna Olivia, if I'd have to guess).

Posted by: Chris B at August 14, 2005 10:38 PM

Look more closely. With the window border and the look of the button, that is most likely the GNOME desktop.

Posted by: somebody at August 15, 2005 09:59 AM

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:

http://www.wolfsheep.com/technical/xpthemes/watercolor.jpg

Posted by: Chris B at August 15, 2005 05:54 PM

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

Posted by: matt at August 15, 2005 05:57 PM

What happened to the width of this page?

Posted by: Sean P at August 16, 2005 05:07 PM

if you post a continuous string of charcters, the page width grows to accomodate them.

Posted by: Bob at August 16, 2005 07:09 PM

bob said:

if you post a continuous string of charcters, the page width grows to accomodate them.

so matt is broken? heh just kidding

Posted by: Chris B at August 17, 2005 02:41 AM

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

Posted by: gnutux at August 22, 2005 12:54 AM

But they didn't say, "No plugin required for IE users." They said "No plugin required,"

implying that that applied universally.

Posted by: Brian at October 12, 2005 10:21 PM

It's not even techincally borken anymore, due to the fact that they don't claim that it is plugin free.

Posted by: trekkie4christ at October 23, 2005 11:02 PM

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