Everyone has been dancing around how to hack "richness" into the browser, but Java (or should I say, the JVM) could have become a standard like javascript, 10 years ago, if Sun had done one thing differently. They should have made Java back the "web app" (much like javascript backs a page) rather than making applets a page component. Then if they had made a nice API into the DOM so that people could actually use it. You could have client side apps that act like a server, but manipulate the DOM. Rebuilding pages without reload. And it would survive page navigation and reload as long as you don't navigate away from the base http://server/path/ perhaps even allow rendering of images and canvases without URL hookbacks.
I guess it all came down to the mechanics of browser plug ins, but if they had been proactive back then, things could have been very different. Easy to say in hind sight I guess.. The whole DOM rendering model has come a long way since then. And even today JVMs can be too heavy weight for some circumstances (reason again to have modularized it and made it leaner a long time ago). I really think the solution is to allow java to function as javascript is being used. The applet "canvas" suffers from the same problem AWT/ Swing does. It ignores the environment it's in says 'just render what you want'. Swing should always have been like SWT. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
