Chet Haase's Blog

Early Access Granted: Java SE 6 Update N

It's here (almost), it's ready (for testing), and it's got a cooler name than ever before.... Java SE 6 Update N (formerly known as the Consumer JRE) is available for early access.

Remember when I talked about an upcoming Java SE 6 release that should address many of the outstanding issues for Java on the client? We used to call it "The Consumer JRE", but then we decided that "Java SE 6 Update N" was a much cooler name. Rolls right off the tongue. More SExy, like. Besides, as my buddy Willy Shakespeare was fond of saying:

What's in a name? that which we call Java SE6 Update N
By any other name would smell as sweet

(I don't know what's up with the "smell" thing. I think it's poetic license.) Whatever the release is called, many of the features in the release are ready for testing. Head on over to the download page and give it a whirl.

Some of the important features in this release (which, by the way, should make for a better Java FX experience when it's released), include:

• Java Quickstarter : Faster coldstart for Java applications and applets
• Deployment Toolkit: Easier detection of a user's Java version from a web page. (Note that the current Testing page is light on details for this feature - we plan to update this item in the next couple of days with specific information about testing this).
• Graphics Performance : Acceleration through Direct3D on Windows for Java 2D, enabled by default
• Nimbus: A new Swing cross-platform look & feel that's much more modern and cool than Metal. Scott Violet was saying that some look & feels were so cool you wanted to lick them. Along those lines, I'd claim that Nimbus is our first Swing lick & feel.

Note that some items planned for the final release are not there yet (we're still working on them). In particular, Java Kernel is still baking internally before we unleash it. So you'll have to check back in a few weeks if you want to hammer on that one.

More information about what is and is not available for testing in this release so far is on the Testing Guidelines page.

Please try it out and send us feedback on it. In particular, please send feedback through the handy Feedback forum on the download page. Much as I enjoy the comments to my blog, I would rather have important release feedback go to the folks that are directly working on the issues to make sure that your input gets heard.

Comments

• Who would one have to threat (or bribe) to get some Direct3D benchmarks and information? ;) Cheers,

  Posted by: mikaelgrev on October 01, 2007 at 01:01 PM

• Feel free to run the J2DBench benchmark (can be found in the jdk7 source tree under j2se/src/share/demo/java2d/J2DBench) - or you favorite benchmark - and post the results for your configuration =)
  
  Dmitri

  Posted by: trembovetski on October 01, 2007 at 01:59 PM

• Noticeably faster load times for the jnlp examples, still not a big fan of nimbus, but overall it's great to see Sun 'put up' their commitment to the desktop again

  Posted by: jhook on October 01, 2007 at 09:17 PM

• Folks, In addition to the Java Kernel, whats equally important is good out of the box media support. Adobe has just released flash lite for mobiles. We have little time to catch up.

  Posted by: bharathch on October 01, 2007 at 09:51 PM

• A correction: Flash Lite - 3 is the just-released version.

  Posted by: bharathch on October 01, 2007 at 09:54 PM

• Don't know when we can see some media support from Java. The media is the area that we have not seen any new development in Java for years.

  Posted by: jdevp2 on October 02, 2007 at 07:57 PM

• Good news chet, When it's released my first thoughts would be trying to convince my boss to update all our client jre java web start apps !!! Thanks to all people that made it possible !!!

  Posted by: aleixmr on October 03, 2007 at 12:11 AM

• Great work, thanks a lot! The pre-loader is something which I whish has been included since 1.3.1_01A ... great that its now finally part of Java-6. Well about the new Java2D pipeline and Nimbus, I am still a bit sceptic because: - Java2D: Its a quite large change to exchange a whole subsystem in an update release. I am afraid to see broken graphics and "this worked for me" posts. - Nimbus: Broken UIs since the default-Lnf was always very compatible (Ocean was amost 99.95% compatible), slow on Linux because the X11 pipeline isn't able to perform well with all those complex antialiased shapes and gradients... Furthermore s it really a good idea to introduce such a colored consumer-lnf as default theme? However great to see progress in this area :) Thanks a lot, lg Clemes

  Posted by: linuxhippy on October 03, 2007 at 01:25 AM

• yes more informationabout the D3D pipeline would be great - what it can do and what not, like Chris' blogs about the OPenGL pipeline... lg Clemens

  Posted by: linuxhippy on October 03, 2007 at 01:27 AM

• I'd like to have more info on the deployment part: a simple drawing explaining how deploy.js, the Firefox xpi and Web Start interact.
  Can I code Java 6 applets without beeing afraid that the Consumer doesn't have the lastest JRE ? (I think I do !!!)

  Posted by: nopjn on October 03, 2007 at 04:04 AM

• Testing guidelines clearly say "JQS targets the Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems running on x86 (IA-32) or compatible hardware." So finally JRE has taken the route of other runtimes, it gives windows-only improvements thought it can be easily ported to other platforms (after all, JQS uses disk cache which is supported on Linux too).

  Posted by: chandru_in on October 04, 2007 at 06:32 AM

• The Update N stuff looks great to me; I think these are all positive developments. And I'm not as worried as some are about cross-platform targeting, because my sense is that the Java community is working hard to keep Linux, Mac, and Windows desktops alike moving forward. But I agree with the others here: these little fixes are meaningless if Java continues to lag in media support. Without it, you lose the "rich" in "rich client." Interestingly, there seems to be more headway from the OpenJDK side (FMJ replacing the moribund JMF, and higher-performance, more modern improvements for JavaSound). I wonder if Sun would be open to letting some of this "bubble up" into the consumer JRE. And this feeds into cross-platform issues, as well -- like QuickTime for Java now being largely abandoned and never having worked on Linux, or Apple abandoning Java MIDI support on Mac OS. AIR/Flex/Flash and Silverlight really aren't comparable to Java, in countless ways -- but that's why I'll be really sad if desktop Java gets steamrolled by more limited platforms, just because Java abandoned its more-robust media support. Heck, after years of us trying to say creative multimedia was important, look at the number of Silverlight and AIR/Flex/Flash music remixers/editors and video editors cropping up.

  Posted by: peterkirn on October 04, 2007 at 08:42 AM

• Peterkim, I absolutely agree with you. I'd never be happy if Java loses out the RIA race, for two reasons a) Java applets were the first real RIAs, this was long before Flash. b) Java was the first to provide a real cross-platform environment. Flash has always been releasing newer major versions of its player on Linux, months after it was released on Windows and OS X. This is why I'm so concerned about Java continuing to improve on all platforms simultaneously.

  Posted by: chandru_in on October 04, 2007 at 09:37 AM

• Peterkim, what is FMJ? I think the story of Java and rich media technology really has to be substantially revamped. In my own blog I mentioned that Java really needs the Codec support asap

  Posted by: peter_pilgrim on October 05, 2007 at 08:01 AM

• How about choosing OGG as the media format for Java RIAs. It offers both audio and video and is also royalty free.

  Posted by: chandru_in on October 05, 2007 at 11:30 AM

• It’ll be no real RIA from Java if Java does not have good multimedia support. Looks like that people at SUN spend too much effort on ‘Look & Feel’ and GUI makeups. The real issues for Java on desktop are deployment and multimedia support. Glad to see that SUN is working on the first issue. Are there any developers at SUN working on the Java media ?

  Posted by: jdevp2 on October 05, 2007 at 02:45 PM

• @chandru_in: I guess the video codec war is over and H264 won it. For sound, it's less evident. MP3 is a must-have, but some more perfomant codec must be considered.

  Posted by: nopjn on October 08, 2007 at 08:18 AM

• I downloaded Java SE from the Sun website. Followed the instructions for changing the path variable and am still getting an error message: java is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. Shat could be causing this. I hope I'm in the right forum - first time

  Posted by: mskitty on March 21, 2008 at 04:02 PM

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