sun did bad job when it comes to browser side java. Microsoft's strategies, and there dislike towards sun made sure that applets never succeeded(remember ie has and had the largest browser market share). However if some one has to be blamed, I think it is Sun's vision and Engineering. In my opinion, Sun engineering failed to: - Move out of the fixed mindset of "jre based browser plugin" and think differently - Visualize something like gwt is possible - Learn lessons from the popularity of flash plugin. - get rid of the ugly gray screen and refresh issues. - Make applets light weight like flash.
I still think that it is not too late for sun to change its course. They should drop the concept of applet and launch the concept called "client side java". "Client side java" should compile into various targets like javascript, swf, silverlight to name few. This way java users would write browser/client based apps and run them everywhere... In one sense this is the true defn of java! Sun should get away from the notion of java to bytecode. Instead they should develop the notion of java to anything! You will write code in java and run it anywhere, literally! One simple bridge of java to swf would change the applet world... just my 2c... On Mar 29, 5:52 pm, Dobes Vandermeer <dob...@gmail.com> wrote: > After some more research it looks like the java plugin isn't as > popular as I thought, only 50%-80% penetration, whereas javascript is > supported in all browsers, and flash has 80%-99% penetration. > > Thus, applets are not cool ... oh well. > > On Mar 29, 3:17 pm, Dobes <dob...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Recently while cursing the slowness of GWT compilation, the slowness > > in the browser, and the lack of Java 6 features, it occurred to me > > that if GWT had simply been built on top of the Java Applet technology > > it could really overcome these limitations. > > > Does anyone know why GWT wouldn't be much better if it were java > > bytecode running in an applet? All the major browsers support > > applets, the Java VM runs the code nice and fast, and applets have > > decent access to the DOM and the ability to run javascript. > > Everything that is needed to implement GWT is available to an applet, > > as far as I can tell. > > > Thoughts? > > > If I had time I'd experiment and try making a knock-off of GWT using a > > hidden applet so I could just write every in Java, run and debug it in > > the Java VM ... could even use Java's built-in RPC mechanism if I > > wanted to. Interesting concept, although it's likely I'm missing > > something important about why the GWT team didn't go this route in the > > first place. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Web Toolkit" group. To post to this group, send email to Google-Web-Toolkit@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to google-web-toolkit+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Web-Toolkit?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
