Following up on Microsoft’s message earlier this week from the Windows Vista Team blog that windows Media Player now works on Firefox, APC Mag has “5 reasons not to trust Microsoft near Firefox“. According to APC Mag:
“(1) Forget extensions, we’ve got an executable . . . One of Firefox’s more appealing features is the ability to add extensions to perform particular tasks. However, as a poster on Microsoft’s own blog noted, Microsoft has released its add-in as an executable, rather than using Firefox’s XPI format. While this isn’t a unique situation for Firefox add-ons, it hardly suggests a deep commitment to the cause by Microsoft.
“(2) It can be a hassle to download. Within a day of releasing the new plugin, users were complaining that it couldn’t be downloaded. It turned out an MS systems administrator had accidentally changed the filename. Not very helpful.
“(3) Cross-platform it ain’t. Firefox is available for a wide range of platforms, but Microsoft’s solution is strictly Windows-only . Mac users can try out Flip4Mac, though it’s not a universally useful solution, while Linux users can curse the difficulty of trying to build their own solution.”
Read (4) and (5) here.
