[Mono-dev] FireFox plugin/ClickOnce was: Mono 1.1.17 has been released.

[Sebastien Pouliot]

Hello Michael,

On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 11:31 -0500, Michael Schurter wrote:
> Sebastien Pouliot wrote:
> > Hello Ted,
> > 
> > On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 00:44 -0400, ted leslie wrote:
> > ...
> >> "write for any purpose, write once, run anywhere"
> >> and unfortunately mono has not provided a means to use it as a browser
> >> plugin like Java. For me i could go for just a plugin to Firefox (linux
> >> and Win32), wouldnt even need it to support IE.
> >> Until this can occur, a programmer still has to Java or (active x
> >> plugin), to achieve  web page integration.
> > 
> > Yes, this feature would be a nice one and, as Jon said in another email,
> > ClickOnce [1] would too be a nice feature. And I can quickly think, even
> > without caffeine, about a few more ;-)
> 
> I'm sorry if you've already been over this before: but does anyone 
> actually use ClickOnce?

I had never seen it in "the wild" but fx 2.0 is still quite young (wrt
to design/development/deployment of new applications).

Anyway I always suspected it's main goal (or target audience) was for
application deployment on intranet or, perhaps, an extranet between
highly trusted partners.

> The only time I've even seen it mentioned (outside of this mailing list) 
> was on Microsoft's site.  I was forced to use it to download some 
> application, and I remember having so much trouble trying to get 
> ClickOnce to work (even with IE on Windows) that I eventually gave up.
> 
> I understand how in-browser apps (like Flash & ActiveX) are appealing, 
> but what is the use case for ClickOnce over the standard Click Twice it 
> takes to run a normal application?  (First click download, second click 
> to run.)

I recall two:

The first is CAS. "Click Twice" == Full Trust (i.e. like all local
application), while "ClickOnce" application can have their own
restrictions.

The second is automatic updates (and policies around that).
-- 
Sebastien Pouliot  <sebastien at ximian.com>
Blog: http://pages.infinit.net/ctech/