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In my recollection, Java was pushed into browsers as part of Sun’s Write Once Run Anywhere strategy. Browser makers went along because it was the era when every
by Decade 9y ago
In my recollection, Java was pushed into browsers as part of Sun’s Write Once Run Anywhere strategy. Browser makers went along because it was the era when everybody wanted to be a platform for plugins. Then Microsoft tried to control the development of Java on Windows, and that was a mess.
The Java plugin was a pain. The runtime took somewhere on the order of 10 seconds to load, and the browser was completely unresponsive during this time. This was also the era before CSS, so if you wanted animated buttons on your web site, you had to use Java. Imagine loading a page, and then seeing a column of gray rectangles that freeze your browser and eventually resolve into dithered (“web-safe” color) buttons. Not a great experience.
Real Media only played video and audio. QuickTime played video and audio and VR snapshots. There were also plugins for specific types of content like VRML.
I feel that Flash took off because Adobe spent lots of money pushing it everywhere, but also because it ran better than Java. The runtime was smaller to download than Java, it started up much faster than Java, and its vector animations played very smoothly compared to the alternatives of the time.
- Drdrdrq 9y agoThis. Java applets were first, but the plugin was horrible (slow) and tooling was aimed at programmers, not designers. I hated flash btw (designers were really creative with it), but in the end it pushed JS and DOM forward, so I guess I should be thankful. :)
- merdreubu 9y agoIt was Macromedia that made Flash, not Adobe. Adobe just ignored it and is now killing it. Edit: Adobe also killed 2 other brilliant Macromedia products, right after acquisition, Fireworks and Freehand.
- Decade 9y agoRight. I remembered that Adobe bought Macromedia, but I thought the acqui-kill was earlier. I was getting the story of Macromedia mixed up with Aldus. And actually, Flash came from FutureWave Software, before Macromedia acquired that company. But Adobe did not ignore Flash. They may have mismanaged it, but they did invest in it, and tried to push Flash into places it does not belong (AIR, and especially PDF). They also tried to turn ActionScript 3.0 into ECMAscript 4. https://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/faq.html https://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/faq.html Now that the Flash runtime is becoming banned, Adobe renamed the Flash Professional content creation program to Adobe Animate, and made it able to export to some flavor of HTML5. The content creation is where they make the money, after all.