[ANN] Stacks published on the Web

[Colin Holgate]

I have downloaded stacks before, but playing stacks in a plugin should  
just load and run, and not be asking permission to write files to the  
hard drive.

If the files needing to be written are just preference settings, then  
the language of the warning should change. As it stands you could be  
giving permission for the stack to completely fill up your drive with  
large movie files or images.

I don't think that the plugin should insist on asking the user for  
permission to load content from the web. After all, the stack itself  
came from the web, so it's too late already! The way it is in  
Shockwave works ok. If the content being loaded is from the same web  
site, there is no warning, if it's from another web site, the user is  
presented a dialog at the time of the reading of the data, and there  
are three options to choose from. You can see that in action here:

http://xfiles.funnygarbage.com/~colinholgate/dcr/solarsystem.dcr

Click past the first screen, then click on the cartoon looking  
element, and click in the 3D space to make a planet with that texture.  
At that instant you get asked for permission. The actual texture  
doesn't work, Cartoon Network removed that file long ago.

The way that Flash works with writing local content works well. Flash  
can, by default, write up to 100k of local data without asking for  
permission. The user can increase or decrease that at any time.

So, in coming up with the best ways to warn people, take a good look  
at how it's done in Flash and Shockwave.