i can't speak for pclark, but i can tell you why i'm against flash/air/etc: the web should be based on free and open standards. the fact that no single company controls the internet is what makes it great.

does anybody remember what things were like before the internet was widely available to everybody? personally, i used compuserve. they were able to charge hideous rates per minute, because they were a de facto monopoly.

allowing a company like adobe to control such a huge swath of the internet is a step backwards towards the compuserve days.

The holistic view is exactly why Adobe Air is bad.

It's not standard and it limits accessibility.

So does Firefox plugins, I don't see anyone leeching out against that. It's a weird puritan view.

Flash is as standard as you can get and air is just an extension off that allowing you to do more stuff off line.

Flash is not as standard as you can get.

The web standards are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Flash is neither of those. The specification is not controlled by a governing body. It is controlled by one company.

Talking about Firefox plugins is straw man, has nothing to do with this conversation and I don't know any websites that require a Firefox plugin to work correctly. If they exist, I don't use them.

saying that flash is not a de facto standard is surely missing the big picture on this. Sorry but what would you call the standard for showing video if not flash? What would you call the standard for doing animation or another other sort of rich manipulation.

Just because it's not open does not mean that it's not a standard.