Dave's Redistricting App Screwed? (UPDATE: New DRA Link, v2.5)

[Adam Griffin]

As of tonight, whenever I go to the app, all I see is an "Install Microsoft Silverlight" button. I tried to install just to be sure there wasn't a newer version, but when I do, it says my version is newer than the one I'm trying to install. Can anyone else access the app?


UPDATE (11/29): As some of you probably heard, complete functionality of DRA was scheduled to end on 11/30. Dave (Bradlee) has been working to fix this problem and transfer the old data to a new source. There is now a new link below (DRA 2.5) that will serve as the future DRA app, although there are no plans to add new data post-2008 to it. There are still glitches and some lack of functionality, but he intends to fix this with time.

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[Adam Griffin]

After uninstalling/reinstalling Silverlight, restarting my browser and restarting my computer, I still get the same message (as do multiple others). I hope DRA isn't gone forever...I'll probably have a meltdown.

[Adam Griffin]

I'm using Chrome and it works fine for me.

Years ago when I first tried DRA (version 1?) I found problems with its compatibility on Firefox due to Silverlight. Since Silverlight is a Microsoft product I switched to IE for my DRA browser and I haven't had that problem since, including my test this morning. Over the years I have occasionally found other Silverlight apps that run best on IE, but those are rare.

What browser are you using right now Griffin.  For some reason, it's not working on Chrome for me and working on Fire fox perfectly well.

Very interesting! It works for me too on Firefox, but not on Chrome (which is what I was using). Kind of embarrassing that I didn't think to try a different browser despite all the process of elimination testing I tried.

[Adam Griffin]

I'm in touch with Dave Bradlee and he is now aware of the problem, for what it's worth.

Antonio, what operating system are you using?

[Adam Griffin]

It looks like the problem is that DRA uses Silverlight and that Silverlight uses the old NPAPI plug in interface which Google has chosen to discontinue support for as they content it causes a variety of problems.  http://blog.chromium.org/2014/11/the-final-countdown-for-npapi.html The latest update to Chrome disabled the support by default tho for now you can still reenable it by manually reenabling it.  However, their plan is that in September they'll totally remove support for it.  Since Microsoft has also announced that they intend to end all support for Silverlight by 2021 and that current support is limited to patching the existing code, I doubt they'll be working on getting it to run on Chrome.  After all, it was no secret that Google was planning on discarding the NPAPI.

In short, until DRA is rewritten to use something other than Silverlight, it won't be working on Chrome.

That was very helpful, thanks. I've forwarded your comments to him.

[Adam Griffin]

bump

is DRA still screwed come 11/30?

Got this from Dave the other day:

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