Consumer Java Is In Beta - RIA Just Got More Interesting
Back in May 2007, I predicted that 2008 would see a renaissance in the use of Java Applets in web browsers. In the coming months, we’ll find out if I was right: the first beta version of the new “consumerized” version of Java (the so-called Consumer JRE aka Java SE 6 update N aka Java SE 6 update 10) has just been released.
You can download either just the JRE, or the full JDK, for Windows, Linux and Solaris. Obviously there’s no Mac OS X support for this yet, and won’t be for the foreseeable future, because Apple does its own version of Java, and has its own mysterious release schedule.
I’ll have more to say about Java applets running under the new JRE and new browser plug-in soon. For now, suffice to say that I was sufficiently impressed by what I saw in early access versions of the consumer JRE, for us to build a commercial computer system with applets as the user interface. It’s going to be deployed across all desktops in the customer’s company.
This is actually the first time in the history of the Java platform that I’ve thought applets have been even close to being good enough for any commercial software I’ve been responsible for. With the new Consumer Java, I think applets running inside modern web browsers are really going to amaze people… the world of rich Internet applications (RIAs) just got a lot more interesting.
Asam Bashir wrote:
Mac OS X already has plenty of Rich Internet Applications for it’s consumers, it’s the rest of the industry trying to catch up remember….
Posted 05 Apr 2008 at 3:37 pm ¶
simon wrote:
Yes - Apple has been a real leader in RIA, that’s for sure. I remember well the day when they launched iTunes in 2001. At that time, we had, for a few years, been pursuing a similar strategy - rich clients levaraging web protocols. I thought, “Good - at least *someone* gets this stuff!”
It was a highly controversial move at the time, because there was a mantra that “everything must be in a web browser”. In some ways this attitude surprised me, because I’d always thought people would be able to see that user interfaces of browser-based apps were 15 years behind good desktop GUI toolkits, and couldn’t leverage other aspects of computer hardware. In other ways, it didn’t surprise me, because so few people have any real understanding of user interface design.
The decision paid off for Apple - iTunes might just be about the most commercially valuable RIA ever written, and it doesn’t use a browser at all.
What I was trying to say with Java applets running under the Consumer JRE and the new Java plug-in, is that - for the very first time in the history of the Internet, it will be possible to build truly usable, robust apps using a genuinely world-class GUI toolkit… that run inside a web browser. That’s potentially a huge deal.
It’s a real pity, though, that most benefits will be seen only under Windows, at least in the short-term.
Posted 06 Apr 2008 at 10:00 am ¶
William Eggington wrote:
I really hope this is the year of the Java Applet. I’m just getting into Demicron’s Wire Fusion. I have been able to offer a few clients something that distinguishes itself from the usual “Flash” site with that tool. The only bummer has been Microsoft’s overzealous security and as you mentioned, Java’s slow startup and chunky user experience. If they can cure that with this release then I’ll be ahead of the curve. Yay! Fingers crossed eh?
Posted 18 Apr 2008 at 5:49 am ¶