The Applet Strikes Back?

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

There’s been some mumbling about recently concerning the resurrection of the Applet in the context of all the Rich Internet Application bru-ha-ha. With the advent of the fast loading Java SE 6 Update 10, this is seeming more and more likely (at least less preposterous than it was a year ago).

The third part of the puzzle is the javascrpt/java bridge: Java Liveconnet. Lets the applet interact with the browser via javascript.

So my questions are: What do you guys think? Is the time right for java on the browser? What’s the situation with LiveConnect? Why didn’t it ever take off? Does IE support LiveConnect?

The reason I’m interested is because we’re researching an application that will require a very performant browser component for displaying and interacting with possibly very large hierarchical graphs. I’d love to do it in Java, but it’s a bit daunting due to the complexity and time required to implement a proof of concept (learing to use LiveConnect will take some time) and then it’s not garunteed to work across browsers (from what I’ve read). The alternative is basically find a javascript lib or generate graph images with graphviz and call it ‘good enough’.

#2

And java se 6 update 10 isn’t even in beta yet, let alone released. It’s meant to be soon, but no one knows for sure.

As far as I know, LiveConnect will work with all browsers. There are some problems with it in Firefox at the moment though.

#3

Yup I do think applets are going to make a come back, just have a look at some of the recent stuff with LWJGL Applets

e.g. http://kappa.javaunlimited.net/betashot5/betashot.html

Most notibly the fullscreen support.

The Java 6 update 10 is looking great, it addresses almost all the issues and limitations that applets had. With the additional help of java kernel and quickstarter i think it should spread and be adopted pretty quickly.

I expect it to be the dominant installed version of Java on windows about 1 and half years after its release.

#4

That’s impressive!

And a cool game, graphics are nice except for the green grid. I like the way you fight a boss really soon. need more weapons though.

#5

not really suppose to be a complete game was just a demo to test applet features, still nice to hear you liked it :slight_smile:

#6

Except that it kills performance with old applets that directly write to an image and blit that: http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=6652116
I really like what Update10 brings to Java except this one thing. I hope that this will be fixed somehow.

#7

There is sort-of good news in that bug report, though. In 6u10 applets can set java arguments, which means the d3d pipeline can be disabled:

<param name="java_arguments" value="-Dsun.java2d.d3d=false">

If it’s disabled, old applets that write directly to an image, and then blit the image (instead of a BufferStrategy) will end up being faster!

#8

A fair amount of the success of update N is going to be how fast it gets on Mac OS… I expect that’ll not happen as hoped though won’t it :frowning:

Cas :slight_smile:

#9

Yes, that’s the real bugging issue with update N. :frowning:
Sun should take control of Java port on Mac…