Web Earth Online

[blahblahblahh]

I just ran a test on this machine which has a version of IE which shipped last december running on Windows XP and has just been rev’ed up with current MS services packs. The JDK version reported via a Java Applet is 1.1.4 Period. I am not misinformed about this. It is you who are misinformed.

The problem is that if you updated any later than about feb you don’t get the VM update. I’m sorry I didn’t make this clearer. I’ve had two PC’s, updated one one week, and couldn’t update the other the next (the VM had been pulled from windows update). I hear you can copy the VM files from one machine to another (blah blah violate agreement etc) but I’ve not tried it.

I’ve had 1.2.x code running on windows VM. At least, that’s what I thought was happening. If the “only available for a few weeks” update to the VM wasn’t any better than 1.1.x then I’m (obviously) completely wrong. And I’ll start digging much deeper on the windows PC’s to see how they’re running that code. It’s perfectly plausible that someone else did something cunning (I don’t own any of the PC’s).

I just read this article the other day.
It states that MS has over 95% of the market

Article:
… Microsoft’s decision could make it more difficult for Macintosh users hoping to access Web content that is tailored for the Internet Explorer, which, like Windows, has more than a 95 percent market share. Microsoft’s Sommer said that the two companies were talking over user content compatibility issues between future versions of IE and Safari …

source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030617/wr_nm/tech_microsoft_apple_dc_3

What is their source (I’m not saying they’re wrong, only that sources I’ve seen tell a different story - e.g. consolidated website stats from hosting companies with thousands of websites…I have a feeling www.netcraft.com once branched out into web-browser stats, but of course they’re just responsible for tracking web-servers; can’t remember public stats I’m afraid )?

I’ve read an awful lot of bllsht from Analysts before, quoting all sorts of market-share figures. Normally, it’s calculated by asking Company X “How many did you ship last year? How many years have you been shipping?” then guessing how many users there are, and deducing the market share. It gets more complicated than that, but often not much. It’s fine for what they use it for, where +/- 50% may not matter - and giving journalists an attention-grabbing fact so they include a quote from the Analyst in their article is often more important than any accuracy.

From websites I administer (or am allowed to see the logfiles for), I see approximately 50%-75% MSIE hits, averaged across anything from hundreds to thousands of clients per day. And none of them are sourceforge.net or anything as biased as that :). 95% is too far out of the range I see for me to believe it.

Of course, if you count “how many people have MSIE installed on their computer”, then the story is different. You could make 95% that way, and not even be inaccurate!

To be honest, I find it hard to believe that 95% of web-surfing PC’s run Windows. AFAIAA very few macs run MSIE, since the development stalled and Safari etc is much better (and is official-Apple). Recall that MSIE does not run at all on linux.

P.S. Sorry for the late reply, but email notification is broken :(.
P.P.S. Sorry for the LONG reply, but I was too brief last time and didn’t back up what I said, so I’ve been more careful this time.

[Captain-Goatse]

Why the hate for DirectX and especially D3D? On Windows platform OpenGL is inferior API. However, if you start to kiss Microsoft’s you can also kiss platform intependance good bye.

God, MS IS TEH EVIL attidude digusts me. To tell the truth Sun is a lot more evil than Microsoft, in fact Sun wants to be like microsoft Probably getting banned for this.

[erikd]

Ehm, this thread is not at all about openGL vs. D3D or MS’s evilness vs. Sun’s evilness, is it? ???

[Captain-Goatse]

No, but every thread I go I see at least one topic don’t use X and X. Thats far from being objective and also retarded.

Take your religious wars somewhere else. If someone asks what about directX, why not give them the facts about it and not just “OH U DID NOT, MS IS TEH EVIL KNOW THAT!”

[Orangy_Tang]

[quote]Why the hate for DirectX and especially D3D? On Windows platform OpenGL is inferior API. However, if you start to kiss Microsoft’s you can also kiss platform intependance good bye.
[/quote]
Platform independant-ness aside, why do you say this? I keep meaning to look into learning DX (particularly because the D3DX lib looks very useful) but always get put off by the ugly code and IBLOODY_AWFUL_COM_CRAP. :-[

[erikd]

[quote]Take your religious wars somewhere else. If someone asks what about directX, why not give them the facts about it and not just “OH U DID NOT, MS IS TEH EVIL KNOW THAT!”
[/quote]
I’m not fighting any religious wars.

I advise against directX when somebody is writing a java game because there’s no point in using java when you use directX. The other way around; when you decide to use java, directX just seems not such a great idea as openGL/openAL suits java better in terms of portability and not having to stick to the MS VM.

[gregorypierce]

Well using DirectX in no way binds a developer to the Microsoft VM.

[erikd]

Is there a usable (recent) directX binding available that works on a non-MS JVM?
Of course you can access directX through JNI just like you can bind openGL, but I thought that these bindings are not available. And, like I said, I don’t see the point of a java - directX combination (except maybe dinput).