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> Java Another internal tool to rewrite from scratch, yay. > Acrobat and the like are no longer supported. Is the build in PDF viewer still burning through

by josefx 10y ago

> Java Another internal tool to rewrite from scratch, yay. > Acrobat and the like are no longer supported. Is the build in PDF viewer still burning through battery power like the electric heater it turned my laptop into the last time I used it? Been some time so that would be interesting to know.

lomnakkus 10y ago
> > Java > Another internal tool to rewrite from scratch, yay. If you care about security in the slightest, you should probably already have done that. > > Acrobat and the like are no longer supported. > Is the build in PDF viewer still burning through battery power like the electric heater it turned my laptop into the last time I used it? Been some time so that would be interesting to know. You can still use an external reader of your choosing; for example I'm using the marvellous Okular. You just can't use an NPAPI-based PDF reader plugin.
- josefx 10y ago
  > If you care about security in the slightest, you should probably already have done that. Signed internal only use tool. Not running untrusted applets anywhere. Also no time to rewrite bug free working code. > You can still use an external reader of your choosing; So the answer is that it is still that bad? I guess I can just browse the web using wget and less if external tools are the next big thing. /s
- Silhouette 10y ago
  If you care about security in the slightest, you should probably already have done that. These plugins have been click-to-play in the major browsers for a long, long time. Obviously they still provide some attack surface, but the biggest threats today don't come from plugins, they come from the main browser functionality, thanks in no small part to all the things browsers now have to provide so we can still do useful things that we used to do with plugins.
- keray 10y ago
  > > > Java > > Another internal tool to rewrite from scratch, yay. > If you care about security in the slightest, you should probably already have done that. What has one to do with the other
blauditore 10y ago
Haven't done anything with Java applets in years, but can't you somehow re-use most of the code and attach a new UI (yeah, still a lot of work probably)?
- mook 10y ago
  I haven't looked into the space recently; how would the UI be attached? The only thing I can think of would be <canvas> (2D or WebGL), which both seem like a ton of work that the vendors don't have yet. Or do a full rewrite to output HTML of some sort. I thought Java applets were popular partly because the widgets are built-in (not always, of course, and the old widgets look pretty horrible now).
  - blauditore 10y ago
    I'm more thinking of something like Vaadin/GWT where you compose the GUI in Java code, in a similar style as e.g. JavaFX, and the framework takes care of displaying it in a web front end. Or, if the application is not strongly coupled to other server-side systems, make it standalone with a Swing, JavaFX or whatever front end.
  - tannhaeuser 10y ago
    As recently as 3 years ago a customer of mine wanted a Java applet for drag-and-drop/file upload from Outlook. Part of the problem was that Outlook doesn't expose serialized object data to DnD; it was necessary to call into a special API to get at the attachment data (but MS invented DnD so it can't be called non-standard I guess). However, another difficulty with using browser file upload controls was that, for security reasons, programatically (JavaScript) putting a file to upload is forbidden (readonly form attribute) by the respective browser API spec, so in the end the GUI part had to be coded in the Java/applet, too, when the HTML GUI would have been preferable. So my point is that Java applets in recent years weren't used for GUIs so much as they were used for piercing the browser sandbox, and I don't see a solution for this problem now that applets have gone.
  - josefx 10y ago
    I needed the applet for the unrestricted filesystem access it offered when the companies key was trusted by the user. Now I could write a swing application that interacts with the server, making it less integrated and convenient to use (and depending on your opinion less pleasent to look at).

by josefx 10y ago

lomnakkus 10y ago

> > Java > Another internal tool to rewrite from scratch, yay. If you care about security in the slightest, you should probably already have done that. > > Acrobat and the like are no longer supported. > Is the build in PDF viewer still burning through battery power like the electric heater it turned my laptop into the last time I used it? Been some time so that would be interesting to know. You can still use an external reader of your choosing; for example I'm using the marvellous Okular. You just can't use an NPAPI-based PDF reader plugin.

josefx 10y ago
> If you care about security in the slightest, you should probably already have done that. Signed internal only use tool. Not running untrusted applets anywhere. Also no time to rewrite bug free working code. > You can still use an external reader of your choosing; So the answer is that it is still that bad? I guess I can just browse the web using wget and less if external tools are the next big thing. /s
Silhouette 10y ago
If you care about security in the slightest, you should probably already have done that. These plugins have been click-to-play in the major browsers for a long, long time. Obviously they still provide some attack surface, but the biggest threats today don't come from plugins, they come from the main browser functionality, thanks in no small part to all the things browsers now have to provide so we can still do useful things that we used to do with plugins.
keray 10y ago
> > > Java > > Another internal tool to rewrite from scratch, yay. > If you care about security in the slightest, you should probably already have done that. What has one to do with the other

blauditore 10y ago

Haven't done anything with Java applets in years, but can't you somehow re-use most of the code and attach a new UI (yeah, still a lot of work probably)?

mook 10y ago
I haven't looked into the space recently; how would the UI be attached? The only thing I can think of would be <canvas> (2D or WebGL), which both seem like a ton of work that the vendors don't have yet. Or do a full rewrite to output HTML of some sort. I thought Java applets were popular partly because the widgets are built-in (not always, of course, and the old widgets look pretty horrible now).
- blauditore 10y ago
  I'm more thinking of something like Vaadin/GWT where you compose the GUI in Java code, in a similar style as e.g. JavaFX, and the framework takes care of displaying it in a web front end. Or, if the application is not strongly coupled to other server-side systems, make it standalone with a Swing, JavaFX or whatever front end.
- tannhaeuser 10y ago
  As recently as 3 years ago a customer of mine wanted a Java applet for drag-and-drop/file upload from Outlook. Part of the problem was that Outlook doesn't expose serialized object data to DnD; it was necessary to call into a special API to get at the attachment data (but MS invented DnD so it can't be called non-standard I guess). However, another difficulty with using browser file upload controls was that, for security reasons, programatically (JavaScript) putting a file to upload is forbidden (readonly form attribute) by the respective browser API spec, so in the end the GUI part had to be coded in the Java/applet, too, when the HTML GUI would have been preferable. So my point is that Java applets in recent years weren't used for GUIs so much as they were used for piercing the browser sandbox, and I don't see a solution for this problem now that applets have gone.
- josefx 10y ago
  I needed the applet for the unrestricted filesystem access it offered when the companies key was trusted by the user. Now I could write a swing application that interacts with the server, making it less integrated and convenient to use (and depending on your opinion less pleasent to look at).