On Fri, 2007-04-20 at 00:38 -0700, Stewart Stremler wrote: > > > > IMO, this was the main one. Basically, you couldn't do anything useful > > without explicitly authorizing the Java applet using a dialog box. You > > couldn't touch the network; you couldn't touch the hard drive. > > You could touch the network, but only back to the server the applet was > loaded from. If you wanted to do fancy network things, you had to write > something on the server, and then use the server's bandwidth.
It's my understanding you can touch anything you want if you write the Java code to do it. Security levels can be adjusted. (I could be wrong, I haven't yet looked that deeply into the various security related issues in Java.) > > I think you can touch the disk -- but only so far as creating temporary > files. So applets weren't much good at scraping content off your local > disk, even if they could temporarily store stuff there. You can do many things by mixing applets, LSP, Tomcat or a Java Application Server, beans, and other Java technologies. > > > Of course, from a usability standpoint, not being able to do anything to > > the computer *sucks*. You can't make YouTube in a Java applet without > > nasty dialogs; you can in Flash. You can't make an iTunes in a Java > > applet without nasty dialogs, you can in Flash. etc. > > I'm not sure I follow. I thought an applet *could* do sound... so you > *could* play youtube or itunes in an applet, more or less. > > Or are you talking about *creating* youtube/itunes content? > > > Yet another example of the users being willing to turn over the security > > of their machine for the tiniest of conveniences. > > > > However ... > > > > That wasn't the only reason. On the developer side, Flash does > > animation. Java doesn't. Now, it does so by soaking up 100% of the CPU > > on your machine, but it does animation. > > Java doesn't do animation *easy*. I've seen Java applets do animation. > > > The Flash authoring tools work very much like the video editing tools > > that the visual arts people already know. There is no such equivalent > > on the Java side. > > Good point. You want animation? Make an AVI, MPEG<whatever>, WMP, etc. and stream it using Tomcat (or another Java enabled server). Send it as a file. Maybe write an app or applet to play it? PGA -- Paul G. Allen BSIT/SE Owner/Sr. Engineer Random Logic Consulting www.randomlogic.com -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
