Adobe/Flash wins yet again when it comes to user experience...

General Discussions
#41

How on earth did Java lose? I remember when we would go onto the net at school and play Java games on the net. There were just so many Java game sites … and then flash came out. It was far too slow and everything had to be played on low quality to get a decent frame rate, but it had interesting games.

I even remember the many sites with mini Java applet games (such as the ever so successful SodaRace), but Sun lost their entire marketshare overnight.

I think they got it wrong for a few reasons:

  • bad documentation on the correct way to draw pixels. This is my number 1 nag of Java, even now they will tell you wrong ways to draw bitmap based games
  • no gaming API; and though ActionScript doesn’t quite have one, it gives full support for what the programmer basically wants to do. So to get a basic game requires much less code, just move the bitmap - you can almost code it without any programming knowledge.
#42

Maybe flash proved that java is not the perfect tool for these small web games that made flash so successful?

Another (bigger) issue is probably the fact that MS quite successfully screwed java by first making an inferiour, incompatible version of java available everywhere, and then abandon it. So basically, java applets either stopped working because java wasn’t installed anymore, or they stopped working because of incompatibilities of the MS VM for which many games were specifically written.
At the time Sun’s JRE had to replace MS’ VM , it was also not very well integrated with browsers.

#43

Yes, flash is more straight forward to download being a plugin at heart. There are more Java developers than Flash programmers, but when it comes to games it’s a different picture. Nearly all of the flash programmers are either interested in games, or website GUI’s; with Java that figure is spread over all of the different uses.

#44

Argh, and messages like this dont help its popularity neither:
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/security/0,39044215,62028389,00.htm

:-\

#45

I doubt this would do anything to its popularity to be honest. There are far more security flaws in Windows, and look what they’ve done!!!

#46

1000 flaws create an acceptance, 1 flaw creates a frenzy :slight_smile:

#47

[quote]Argh, and messages like this dont help its popularity neither:
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/security/0,39044215,62028389,00.htm
[/quote]
It looks like that zdnet article was based on incorrect info - the issue was already patched:
http://news.com.com/Java+flaw+poses+widespread+security+threat/2100-1002_3-6196493.html

#48

am i the only one that thinks the adobe one is no more pretty or informative than the java one? (the app launcher rather than the runtime installer)

#49

“elk voordeel heeft zijn nadeel, elk nadeel heeft zijn voordeel”
might have gotten the qoute a bit wrong but thats pritty much it. (qoute from Johan Cruijff, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Cruijff ) For the non dutch spreakers, this means as much as ‘every advantage has a disadvantage and vice versa’.

What I’m getting at is that if only we had more security flaws, the update cycles would be faster, java wouldn’t get restrained as much and ppl would true;y realise how much stuff runs java today.

“It would be an extremely difficult and laborious process for an organization trying to patch Java Runtime across the enterprise,” he said.

ever wondered why windows update is so painless?

and I kinda agree with g666 to somw extend. (as in it doesn’t me we shouldn’t be aware or assert stuff like this because it’s ‘adiquate’)

#50

See:
http://www.java-gaming.org/forums/index.php?topic=16836.0

It’s old news… totally blown out of proportions. They made it sound like there is something fundamentally wrong with Java, but in fact some native image parsing lib had some buffer overflow. That kind of thing happens quite often with C/C++.

Besides… it’s the same with flash. You have to update it regularly if you want to be on the save side.

#51

No, it’s to publish infinitely many games. The licenses proves you are who you say you are tied to a domain, it is not tied to any single game/product. Just publish all your games on one domain and you’re fine.

#52

Actually, it’s pretty hard.

#53

Just got an automatic update, and was delighted to see this popup:

http://tmachine1.dh.bytemark.co.uk/images/java-updater-screenshot.png

That’s much much better than what it used to use. Nice to see these seemingly small but IMHO and IME important and valuable improvements in java 6’s GUI :).

#54

heh, when i got that i was thinking how poor it still was. Of course im just being pedantic, but…
-it stalls on copying new files for ~5 minutes, perhaps it should say downloading files, with a separate progress bar
-the text is somewhat hilariously overenthusiatic
-the “Visit java.com” is not actually a link :stuck_out_tongue:

in short then, it is better, but lacks attention to detail.

#55

Sun is really trying to emphasize on the Java brand. It kinda gets in the way, and looks foolish. Java is not the holy grail, and should not be marketed as such. The text is written in such a way you stop reading halfway, if not sooner. It’s the perfect example of marketing gone bad. It could as well have stated “Java is fantastic! If it wasn’t for Java, you wouldn’t be looking at this progress-bar, w00t!”, as people stop reading after the ‘fantastic’ part.

Just like the Java systray message whenever you stumble on a page with an applet. What would you think of a website that window.alert()'s you that AJAX is being used to dynamicly update its content, or when every website with Flash embedded, would cause such a notification, there would be huge protest and Adobe would revert it withing a few days if not hours. The end-user doesn't give a damn about the technology, it's about the product. Such notification are plain annoying, technology should be hidden from the end-user.
#56

Well Sun need to put their branding somewhere (from their point of view). I mean Flash have your right click!

#57

I’ve yet to see the first lightbulp with the brand etched in the glass.

#58

I’m sorry, but I get the impression you aren’t that experienced with consumer-marketing and brand awareness (I’m no expert, but I’ve made a living out of consumer and viral marketing, and worked very closely with people who are experts at it).

The text on there is actually really good at appealling to the ill-informed who don’t know what java is and are suspicious and a little afraid of it. Peoplelike you aren’t in the target audience of readers and don’t need to read it, and won’t have any positive or negative effect on the brand whatever goes in that box. You care more about performance, stability, usability, availability, etc.

Saying “Java is fantastic, w00t!” is exactly what Sun needs to do more of - they haven’t been doing it anywhere near enough and it’s cost java a lot in mindshare. Mindshare among non-technical people is often what drives both large projects (with senior managers who don’t understand tech and don’t care) and novel projects (with creatives who don’t understand tech and don’t care). Microsoft showed over the course of many years that it’s not the best tech that wins, it’s the best “marketing to the person who signs off on the budget” that wins.

IMHO.

#59

Marketing text like that always angers me right up.

“…experience the power of Java…” Power? To do what? End world hunger? Cure cancer? Flash up windows that demand my attention while not telling me anything that I remotely care about, along with a stark command to “visit Java.com” without any suggestion as to why?

From what I can learn from that dialog the only power Java has is to give me the dry heaves.

#60

may be sun should make this next loader as simple as that:

you dislike this GUI ? you are a talented designer ? just send us your GUI,
$10000 for the sun GUI contest winner ?

                                              Loading....  ;)

design society will no answer, but thousand of talented designer will, and sun will gain the best GUI ever.

I said that as it is a joke, but some compagny use to do this or similar…