Damian Hamill wrote:
I started to wonder if I should switch to c# .NET. I would rather
stick with Java but the 16MB JRE download is a killer.
One of our goals is Java everywhere. Literally.
Unless Java
Applets are as easy for the user as other technologies then they will
be second choice for developers. I believe there is a solution but it
means changing the way classes are loaded, but it may take the JVM
out of spec, I don't know.
The problem is that before you start to run your applet you have to
download and install everything that makes up the JRE including
classes, programs and dlls that your applet will never use. A better
solution would be to download and install the core JVM and the classes
your applet uses only. Everything else should be downloaded on
demand e.g.
package javax.sql.rowset;
public abstract class BaseRowSet implements Serializable, Cloneable {
public static String classSourceURL =
"http://www.mydistribution-server.com/cgi-bin/classServer.cgi";;
// nothing else defined in this stub class. }
The class loader finds a class with only the classSourceURL field and
uses the URL in the field to download the real class passing the fully
qualified class name as an argument. The class server can return a
zip file with the named class and all the classes it depends on.
Yep.
This is a concern of a lot of people, especially when you see J2SE 6
throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the JRE. So having core
modules and optional modules that can be downloaded on demand would be
very cool.
However, the reason why you don't need this w/ MSFT is because it's all
there already. We need to achieve the same thing with java - ubiquity.
I'm pretty sure that MSFT won't be shipping it, but suppose we could
get it bundled w/ Firefox? :)
geir
