THEORY AND PRACTICE

Vanishing Plug-in Support

by Lowell Rapaport

USERS WHO HAVE INSTALLED Service Pack 2.0 for Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) 5.5 or who have upgraded to the new 6.0 version of the browser may have discovered that their collections of Netscape plug-ins no longer work. Of even greater concern is the fact that Windows XP, the next version of Microsoft's venerable desktop operating system, will not include a built-in Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

The Java move follows a legal settlement between Microsoft and Java developer Sun Microsystems, so its origins are easy to trace. The loss of plug-in support in IE is harder to figure out. Netscape-style plug-ins are among the oldest browser technologies and, unlike Java, have been generally uncontroversial.

In a formal statement, Microsoft said that it had "made the decision to not support old-style Netscape plug-ins in IE 6.0 and IE 5.5. While there is little love lost for plug-ins, which have to be downloaded and installed in a process that is cumbersome for many users, Microsoft has been criticized for the suddenness of its decision. This has led to a flurry of activity among developers to replace plug-ins with ActiveX controls.

One developer impacted by Microsoft's move was VisionShape of Placentia, CA. The maker of the TiffSurfer browser-based image management tool has more than 250,000 registered users. "We had to drop everything and put our programmers to work developing the ActiveX version of our plug-in," said Dan Borrey, vice president of sales. "On top of that, we're getting angry calls from customers saying that our TiffSurfer plug-in stopped working." The company expects to have an ActiveX control available at www.tiffsurfer.com by late September.

Many developers are already moving toward ActiveX controls, component object model (COM) objects and .NET controls, but momentum has also been building behind Java, which has just begun to hit its stride as a platform for content management and serious business applications. While Microsoft has declined to package a Java-enabling virtual machine with its new operating system, the company says Windows XP will download a JVM as soon as an applet is encountered.

"There are 7.5 million Web sites with embedded Java applets according to Sun," says Simon Wieczner, CEO of Java-focused toolkit supplier Snowbound Software of Newton, MA. "That's too much [Java] to go away just because Microsoft drops direct Java support."

For now, Microsoft's moves create a challenge for Web developers who have to switch to ActiveX controls. Users downloading Microsoft's latest browser will face problems with plug-in-dependent files and software and, potentially, glitches and hang-ups as they encounter Java-dependent Web sites and applications.