On Jan 18, 2008 4:39 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Not that I think we should go headlong into using
java. There are many
good arguments against having most than the absolute minimum of
executable code launched from our pages. Accessibility for the
disabled, client compatibility, client performance issues (and
accessibility to people on computers of limited performance),
maintance and longevity issues, compatibility with non-web mediums
(print, etc). I won't belabor this further, since we've discussed this
before.
I won't disagree here: thus "if necessary, for heavy-weight stuff". I
think it's definitely a good thing that MediaWiki currently operates
using nothing beyond HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and a minimum of the
latter.
I'd like to see robust, complete, and fully free
licensed Java
installs for Windows/Mac which we could redistribute ourselves if we
wanted, and which we could reasonably expect people to be using as
their normal Java environments before I'll concede that Java's
freeness issues are gone entirely, but that really does seem within
reach now.
Also no disagreement from me: "not *quite* ideal, but hopefully getting there".