Webstart Upgrade - WTF?

General Discussions
#1

I was just trying the new Nimbus L&F via the webstart demo they’ve got available ( http://www.jasperpotts.com/blog/category/nimbus/ ). It requires JRE 1.6 so it starts doing some weird auto-update during the normal webstart download bit, and seriously, could this be made to look any worse?

759×570 256 KB

That normal webstart dialog is centered as normal, so the upgrade window appears in a really weird place. And a totally unfamiliar size too. Why isn’t this intergrated into the existing webstart window? At the very least they could make it look like a normal window by having sensible size and placement, and at least try and match the same style as the regular webstart popup. Not even the button styles match!

When it ticks over to item 4, it changes the text to “4. Install Components. This might take a few…” and the rest is cut off because of the stupidly small window size.

But the absolute worst part is that shitty Sun logo in the corner. The image above is a non-lossy png, but the logo looks like it’s been put through a jpeg compressor, crumpled up, then put through a jpeg compresser again just for good measure. What the fuck?

This has to be one of the worst pieces of UI “design” I’ve seen in ages. The whole process looks shoddy and hastily put together by someone who really didn’t have a clue what they were doing. When on earth did this abomination sneek into Webstart?

#2

It’s bene there for a long long time, and probably forgotten bij Sun.

#3

@OT:

  1. This is typically why you don’t let engineering do interface design :slight_smile:

  2. How much does your wallpaper rock!!! Can’t WAIT for NiGHTS on Wii. One of the best games that ever graced the ill-fated Saturn. In fact, I was playing it yesterday…

Seriously though, I’ll bring this up to the Webstart team.

-Chris

#4

And the 4-step window has Metal LnF while the WebStart window has the System LnF. I didn’t know that was actually possible, they must use two different VMs for the different windows.

When I got that window on other peoples’ computers I thought it was because it was upgrading from 1.4, but looks like yours is 1.5 to 6. That’s a real pity it’s still so ugly!

#5

According to SUN they’ll re-do the whole Autoupdate stuff in near future.

This will also include not installint tens of different update versions side-by-side :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :smiley:

lg Clemens