Hi Ralph,
I saw a demo given by Adobe a few months ago where they are developing a portal on the client using their flash technology. I have been thinking about how to accomplish the same thing since then without requiring a proprietary product.
Pivot is certainly applicable to this task.
as best I can understand it pivot seems to be all about creating standalone non-html widgets in the browser.
We describe Pivot as "an RIA platform for Java". It is analogous to Flex and Silverlight (and, to some extent, JavaFX). In fact, we often say that it represents what we think Sun should have done instead of JavaFX.
Pivot is actually a complete, self-contained windowing toolkit that is capable of running in the browser. So, it is more about creating rich applications that can run in the browser (possibly interacting with one another via LiveConnect, as you describe below).
Pivot can also be used to create desktop applications, but that is probably outside the scope of what you are considering.
However, it would seem that since LiveConnect allows Java apps to interact with the HTMLDocument as well as Javascript that Pivot could easily be extended to become a client-side portal container that could aggregate content of various types using layouts and permissions provided by a server side component. Hopefully, this would allow for more seamless integration then some current technologies allow.
Agreed, though I'm not sure it would make sense to "extend" Pivot for this purpose. I could certainly see building such a platform on top of Pivot - whether or not it should be part of the platform itself, I'm not sure. I'd like to hear more about what you have in mind.
1. Am I totally off base in my thinking? 2. If not, is there any interest in doing this in Pivot?
I would personally be very happy to support such an effort. At a minimum, it would help build further interest in the platform and provide an additional selling point.
Greg
