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More on Java web browsers

Yesterday's blog about the JDIC Plus project's tight integration with the single-platform IE browser didn't kick off nearly the firestorm that one might have expected, although there was one pretty strong reaction over in the forums.

In Re: JDICplus is ready!, will69 writes:

Could you please post some sort of mission statement for JDICplus? At the present stage this project seems to be in the "stupid Java move of the week" category. What are you trying to achieve? Is this supposed to be platform-neutral eventually? Nobody and his dog cares about integrating Internet Explorer into anything. IE died when MS decided IE6 had crushed the competition and stopped development on that project. IE7 (what a failure!) and IE8 (vaporware?) don't even have native SVG support, a feature we simply take for granted in a modern browser. It would have been much more logical to integrate a browser that is available on most platforms, like Mozilla Firefox or - even better - Opera. Mozilla and Opera have demonstrated Java competence in the past. Opera even offers pure Java browsers for mobile phones. Please work with them to create a Java-integrated or pure Java browser.

Some of the people who replied to the JDIC Plus story on JavaLobby also complained that the project might not even be necessary had Swing's HTML support been kept current and viable over the years. And there's another technology to consider: Sun announced at January's Mobile & Embedded Developer Days that they were adopting the open-source WebKit for JavaFX and JavaFX Mobile. As it turns out, they implicitly announced this last November, when they introduced their WebKit teams to webkit-dev list. Sun doesn't say it's porting WebKit to Java, but their stated approach might be broadly reusable:

This integration requires webkit platforms, or ports, similar to those that exist for qt or gtk, that will support embedding webkit into the various flavors of Java that sun plans to support. Internally, we have discussed several approaches for creating a new port for Java. We believe that the best strategy for Sun and the community is to create a port that enables Sun to decouple its ports from the main webkit project. We'd like to help to create a toolkit independent, "stub" port that enables sun to develop ports outside of the main webkit repository. We've been using the term "embedded platform" to describe this concept, and we intend for it to be a simple abstract porting layer that will create explicit separation between a port and webkit platform independent code.

So, if WebKit can be integrated into JavaFX, will we pick up Java SE integration as part of the deal? It's an encouraging thought. After all, WebKit is fast, standards-compliant, and used by a number of popular browsers -- most obviously Safari, but Wikipedia lists others. In fact, I've been using the WebKit Nightly Builds as my browser of choice for a few months now. Getting it as a Java browser technology, one that already passes Acid3 and supports the HTML5 <video> tag, could be a real breakthrough.

Also in today's Forums, tdanecito asks Why is Java Deployment kit installing beta version of jre? "I discovered if you use the Java Deployment kit when no jre is installed it downloads and installs jre 1.6 U10 b14. If a version of 1.6.0 is installed it does not download the beta of 6uN. If I use either of the following it downloads the beta -- deployJava.createWebStartLaunchButton(url); or deployJava.createWebStartLaunchButton(url,'1.6.0'); -- I really do not want users downloading the beta yet."

jharrop2 wonders about JavaFX terms in licensing - redistribution of jars? "I'd like to understand the restrictions, if any, on redistributing javafxrt.jar with my application. [A] blog post says: "Nandini Ramani (Sun) clears up any confusion on the JavaFX user list: 'I would like to reiterate that it is perfectly fine to distribute your JavaFX applications, in fact we encourage it. I was just pointing out that it is not yet ready for commercial use. [Developers] are welcome to distribute their applications. 'Unlike other proprietary companies, we at Sun really do believe in open source and community involvement. I am sorry we do not have a licensing model in place yet, but I assure you that we are working on it and I will keep you all posted as soon as we have one in place.'" However, the license in https://openjfx.dev.java.net/source/browse/openjfx/LICENSE/ is still the Technology Evaluation License. Or am i looking in the wrong place?"

The latest Java Mobility Podcast is Java Mobility Podcast 40: Navigon - navigation on your phone . In it, Terrence talks with Phillip Candal about their new Scabler product that has integrated mapping and GPS solution and how it was developed by J2ME Polish.

In Java Today, Jim Connors shrinks the 88MB Linux JDK down to 31MB in Reduced Footprint Java SE: Bringing Java Standard Edition Down to Size. "A previous blog post demonstrated how you can, with minimal effort, lessen the disk footprint of a typical Java SE 5.0 runtime environment by about a third without violating the Java Standard Edition Licensing agreement. That post focused primarily on removing optional files and compressing class library jar files.  It turns out that with a little more engineering,  there is significant opportunity for further space optimization."

Lucas Torri has announced the release of version 0.5 of the Marge project., just in time for the project's first anniversary. Marge is a framework to simplify development of Bluetooth applications in Java ME or SE, abstracting away some of the more complex parts of JSR 82. Check the releases page to see the 0.5 changeset.

The SDN article NetBeans, Solaris, GlassFish: The Ruby's Red Slippers Fit, reports on how the Ruby landscape is turning into a gem, fueling the move to Web 2.0. "Ruby's growing popularity, as well as its support on the JVM through JRuby, plus the tooling support of the NetBeans IDE and Solaris OS support in Cool Stack, results in a complete Ruby developer environment, from tools and databases to servers and runtimes."

In today's Weblogs, Scott Oaks asks What does it mean to be faster? "If a machine does a simple test faster than machine B, is machine A the faster machine for your needs?"

In another JavaFX-related item, Tom Ball discusses a Divide and Conquer approach to fighting JavaOne deadlines. "Short on resources and time to deliver a solution? The JavaFX Script compiler team is, so we followed the Unix tool development rules to create a version of the javadoc tool for the language in record time."

Finally, in Closure and groovy builder, Rémi Forax writes: "One think i really like in Groovy, it's its concept of Builder. It allows to simply create tree of objects like XML trees using a concise syntax. [...] Ok, so let's try to do the same in Java using the BGGA closure proposal."

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Comments

• i am getting the following error in one of my modules where we have used applet and servlets.

  java.io.StreamCorruptedException: Type code out of range, is 126

  let me know if any one has any idea on this at all..
  

  Posted by: ashokgolla on April 02, 2008 at 03:29 PM

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