A customer wants a guess at what proportion of corporate firewalls
block Macromedia Flash, a form of active content for websites. I
figure that's not gonna be something we can find out, since that'll
depend on how they're configured, and most sites won't be interested
in making that info widely available.
One measure is obviously to analyze logs of a dual website, one
that's offered both in Flash and in straight HTML, and see how many
people prefer the plain presentation; for one site we've done that
appears to be right about 50%, but that figure will obviously vary
wildly by the type of site.
But another approach would be to find out what sorts of firewalls
_can_ be configured to block Flash, and what percentage of the
firewall market they make up. I'd be inclined to guess that the
answer is "Gauntlet can block flash, as shipped; anything that can
scrutinize content can in principle block flash, but it's an
improbably large amount of work for anything except Gauntlet", but I
really don't know.
Anybody out there have a clue they'd be willing to share?
Thanks,
-Bennett
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