I just bought my new computer, an HP m9350f, a month ago and installed Firefox and Opera as part of my first day setup. I have a Netflix subscription that I use primarily to watch streaming movies, usually on my computer in the living room, not the one in my bedroom. Netflix only streams with a plugin for Internet Explorer, so I wasn’t using Firefox, and decided to head over to Hulu to check out their collection.
I needed to download the Flash plugin for Internet Explorer. No big deal. I head over to the site, and instead of the expected “security bar” popping up asking for permission to install a plugin, I’m greeted with this message:
Adobe is battling for marketshare with Silverlight, and JavaScript in native web apps as the rendering engines become faster, and they don’t support new computers? Half of the new systems at Best Buy and Circuit City come with a 64-bit version of Windows Vista in order to support the higher amounts of RAM they now come with. What is Adobe thinking?
Andy
October 26th, 2008
Interestingly, I came across this earlier today from the MS Silverlight website, a couple of hours after reading this post:
RECOMMENDED: Use Silverlight in the 32-bit Internet Explorer process on x64 systems. Most browser plug-ins (including Silverlight, Flash, Java and almost all ActiveX controls) only work in 32-bit browsers currently.
From this I gathered that a 32bit process IE/browser is required to run not only silverlight but also all the other plug-ins it mentions. I was trying to install on a 32 bit Vista just for reference.
I’ve no doubt that the 64bit support will soon come, but agree that it’s a little peculiar that it hasn’t been more swift in coming.
Darren
October 26th, 2008
It’s more that just that. They do not support Vista Home Basic for some of their programs as well, so they are losing money.
Brendon Kozlowski
October 27th, 2008
I think that it’s much more surprising over how slow ALL 64-bit development has been. It’s seemingly not been made a priority, probably because all 64-bit OSs have been forced to provide a fallback for 32-bit based software, so what’s the (business) point in taking extra time to support 64-bit when there are still many people with 32 bit computers and a long lifetime?
It kinda sucks.
Roderik Emmerink
December 6th, 2008
I fully agree here. I noticed it a while ago and noticed it was still not available yesterday after my Vista reinstall (had to since hdd failed
). The same issue with the current JRE from Sun.
The same feeling as I had with Linux plugins and drivers for ages. These are just the things that turn you off. It disappoints me a lot, they should do these developments from the principal idea that it should not matter which platform you use and besides that I beleive that it will boost the product perception and will to adopt it even when you use another platform yourself.