Re: [PLUG] Plugins and Mozilla

[gabriel rosenkoetter <gr@eclipsed.net>]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2001 at 10:09:19PM -0500, Bill Jonas wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 30, 2001 at 12:52:13AM -0500, gabriel rosenkoetter wrote:
> > Despite even that, what about this required what of Java? Just the
> > fact that it was embedded in a web page, no?
> I don't quite understand the point you're making here...

That this doesn't require Java, the class library (which I maintain
is really bad), nor even Java, the base programming language (pretty
good), but rather Java, the virtual machine (a good idea poorly
implemented thus far... poorly not because there are no good
implementations, but because they are inconsistent).

Point being, it would be a good example of the usefulness of Java (the
virtual machine) if it'd worked as well on my machine as it does
on yours, as it would on my roommate's Win98 PC, as it would on a
mac up on Swarthmore's campus across the street from me. But it
doesn't... and it doesn't even not work in those various places in
the same way.

One could blame this on whoever coded the applet, but that wouldn't
be fair, since the last time I checked, it was be insanely
difficult to support every possible JVM, and one would be out of
date with one of them within a week.

> Anyway, you'd asked for a useful example of Java on the client side... <g>

Erm, well, yes, and while this is useful, I don't understand why it
necessarily required Java.

(Why not Shockwave? As much as I hate to say it, the closed nature
of that product means that when you produce something for it, it
will reliably work the same way on all users' systems. Not that it
would be impossible for Java to have worked this way, but at this
point it's out of Sun's control, not truly open, and been snapped up
by MS and netscape, which makes it awfully hard for the problems to
be fixed.)

       ~ g r @ eclipsed.net


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