I had a previous aside post about the fact that ABC.com and Yahoo mail don’t work on Linux anymore, but I forgot to mention one of my biggest pet peeves- Educause.edu (In particular the conference videos). It’s not just Educause- any educational site that excludes Linux users (SCOLA does it too) is doing a disservice to education, because some schools are moving to Linux as a way to cut costs. I understand that some of the things that they present using these nice tools wouldn’t currently be possible on Linux- but they could at least provide an alternative, like a downloadable file or an alternate, flash embedded file. Love it or hate it, Flash is pretty much the only cross platform media option out there.
I honestly don’t think that this will be an issue much longer. Linux use is steadily increasing, and while it probably won’t ever dominate the market, it will probably have a large chunk of it before too long. I think this for several reasons- Windows is getting overly bloated, and people are not going to want to upgrade their computer JUST to run their operating system. Plus, as more and more applications move to the web, it will become increasingly unimportant what operating system you use. That second point is a bit of a catch 22, because people won’t want to switch to Linux if their web “applications” won’t run. I think that us geeks will be enough of a force to drive the first wave of Linux friendly web development, by refusing to use applications that don’t run on Linux. (I’ll be emailing Yahoo to ask for a refund on my premium service, since I can’t access it on Linux anymore.)
According to my web stats, 2.7% of my users use Linux- that’s small but not insignificant. (OK, that might be skewed due to the fact that I use Linux to look at my own site sometimes.) I remember, several years ago that less than 10% of users used any browser other than IE. Now, only about 45% use IE. I fully expect to see the same thing happen with Linux.
Anyway, all that is not really what I wanted to talk about. There are some things that DO still work on Linux, and work really well. TED.com, for instance, changed their interface, and it is very nice. It uses Flash and something like lightbox to display the videos on a shaded background. They also let you embed videos in your blog from their website, which is a nice touch.
TED.com video interface.
The fact that TED has kept their site pretty accessible makes me happy- because the content there is great, and makes me think, and is presented nice. They also have downloadable MP3′s and videos of most talks. It’s (almost) everything I hope the web will become.
More than anything, I am optimistic about the future. Open source and open access will continue to grow in demand and popularity. We will be able to find more and more good information free on the internet- and I hope I have a job someday that facilitates that. We will build new economic models to support a society that accepts open access and open source as the norm. And I’ll help. It makes me so happy.