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I started out writing about how I thought this was insane and by the end of it I had changed my mind and - suspending disbelief and assuming they can pull this

by zmmmmm 16y ago

I started out writing about how I thought this was insane and by the end of it I had changed my mind and - suspending disbelief and assuming they can pull this off in a reasonable and performant manner - it's actually a pretty clever idea. Now that Apple, Google and Microsoft have all put the nail in the coffin of applets by not supporting them on their mobile devices Java is looking decidedly shaky as a client side browser technology - especially when you consider that Flash IS shipping to most devices. However Oracle can actually one-up Flash here if they can promise to run inside the browser on any platform. Not too long ago it would have been impossible, but with things like Canvas, WebWorkers and WebSockets they can probably make a reasonable stab at implementing at least the functions of a standard Applet with Javascript.

duskwuff 16y ago
Java as an applet host has been effectively dead for years. I would be very surprised if Oracle were trying to resurrect that. Seems more likely that they'd be trying to replace the server JRE with a server-side JS interpreter.
- mambodog 16y ago
  Java as an applet host has been effectively dead for years. Blackboard still uses it :(
- zmmmmm 16y ago
  Seems more likely that they'd be trying to replace the server JRE with a server-side JS interpreter Unless you're suggesting they are being willfully misleading I'm not sure how you could interpret that from what they said: ...we think it’s something that we need to do for the community so we can make Java available more places from tablet devices like the iPad ... I think Java applets are a lot less dead than people realize. There are heaps of enterprises that have deployed them for internal apps (essentially a slightly less evil version of ActiveX). I could easily imagine a lot of these places now have executives wandering around with iPads complaining that the payroll app doesn't work on their computer any more.
Shorel 16y ago
Or, they can stop having fear of the NIH syndrome and embrace Google Android. Nah, that will never happen.

by zmmmmm 16y ago

duskwuff 16y ago

Java as an applet host has been effectively dead for years. I would be very surprised if Oracle were trying to resurrect that. Seems more likely that they'd be trying to replace the server JRE with a server-side JS interpreter.

mambodog 16y ago
Java as an applet host has been effectively dead for years. Blackboard still uses it :(
zmmmmm 16y ago
Seems more likely that they'd be trying to replace the server JRE with a server-side JS interpreter Unless you're suggesting they are being willfully misleading I'm not sure how you could interpret that from what they said: ...we think it’s something that we need to do for the community so we can make Java available more places from tablet devices like the iPad ... I think Java applets are a lot less dead than people realize. There are heaps of enterprises that have deployed them for internal apps (essentially a slightly less evil version of ActiveX). I could easily imagine a lot of these places now have executives wandering around with iPads complaining that the payroll app doesn't work on their computer any more.

Shorel 16y ago

Or, they can stop having fear of the NIH syndrome and embrace Google Android. Nah, that will never happen.