Ethan Nicholas's Blog

Announcing the Consumer JRE (again!)

When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone at MacWorld, Mac fans were understandably upset that no other announcements were made. There was nary a mention of Macs, Mac OS X, or iPods -- and disgruntled fans pointed to this as evidence that Apple was ignoring these products.

A few of the saner voices in the audience took the stance that since nothing could possibly have competed with the iPhone announcement, there was no point in Apple even trying to talk about anything else until the iPhone furor died down. After seeing what happened at JavaOne, I'm inclined to agree with this particular theory.

The "iPhone effect" has struck again -- only this time it's the "JavaFX effect". We announced a bunch of exciting things at JavaOne 2007, but the news of JavaFX has inspired so much coverage and discussion that it's hard for anything else to get any press time.

The other big announcement, the one you might not have seen much (or any) coverage of, was the Consumer JRE. The Consumer JRE is a release of Java 6 targeted at making the end-user experience better, meaning smaller downloads, faster installs, better graphics performance, smoother installation, faster startup, better reliability, and a bunch of other nice enhancements.

The best part is that I've seen several references to a "rumored" Consumer JRE release. Considering that we publicly announced the Consumer JRE in front of thousands of developers, I think we can safely move this particular 'rumor' into the "confirmed" column.

In case you missed my JavaOne session about the Consumer JRE, here's what you should know:

• The Consumer JRE will be a Java 6 update release delivered in the first half of 2008.
• It features performance and usability enhancements geared towards easier, better, faster end-user distribution.
• Will include the Java Technology Deployment Toolkit, a suite of technologies enabling much simpler JRE detection and installation.
• The JRE is being modularized, so that bits and pieces of it can be downloaded as needed. In the current prototype, the download needed to support a typical Swing program is between 3 and 4MB.
• Java Quick Start Service will pre-load portions of the JRE into the system disk cache, substantially decreasing the average start-up time.
• A new and improved installer will streamline, simplify, and speed up the installation process.
• Future updates will be delivered in-place -- you will no longer inadvertently end up with fifteen different versions of the JRE on your system.
• Some of these features may be delivered sooner than others.

I'll go into more details about these specific features in the near future. But for now, at least be aware that the Consumer JRE is anything but a rumor.

Also, take note of this poll. Despite the dearth of coverage, it sounds like at least some folks caught the announcement.

Comments

• Ethan;

  Somehow the message didn't get out loud and clear during JavaOne, you are right, it's because everybody's talking about JavaFX. However, in those discussions people are bring up the "deployment issue" over and over.

  I took the liberty of summarizing your talk from my notes, hopefully I got it mostly right.; "Easy Deployment is Finally Here" session notes

  Augusto

  Posted by: augusto on May 17, 2007 at 01:08 PM

• Ethan, thank you very much for this post. What we all want is the Consumer JRE focus. Make this as good as you can (and better browser support for JNLP too, please). As Augusto mentioned, half of the comments about JavaFX is that it's useless by itself. Well, maybe not that bad, but we all wanted _much_ more to hear about Consumer JRE. So, at least we'll have a good answer for Windows if it goes well. Thanks much for the post.

  Posted by: tompalmer on May 17, 2007 at 02:00 PM

• Oh, and make those 3-4 MB for Swing be loaded in the initial download please. I would want my app to be the one that loaded slowly.

  Posted by: tompalmer on May 17, 2007 at 02:02 PM

• Um, make that "wouldn't want". I'm on a roll.

  Posted by: tompalmer on May 17, 2007 at 02:03 PM

• 
  Make this as good as you can (and better browser support for JNLP too, please).

  
  That was addressed in the talk too (fixing the problem of JNLP files downloading instead of launching).

  Posted by: augusto on May 17, 2007 at 02:14 PM

• This and something like in your other blog:
  "Integrate JAR files into your Windows desktop" that is multiplatform, would be great.

  Posted by: i30817 on May 17, 2007 at 02:20 PM

• Augusto, I just looked at your post. Thanks much for the detailed notes. Looks like some great stuff. Ethan, if Sun keeps pushing this, someday we can lose our Flash envy. Keep it going.

  Posted by: tompalmer on May 17, 2007 at 02:32 PM

• I think the reason people talked about Java FX wasn't because of excitement but because they were shocked that Sun would compare that technology to Flash at this time. Lots of the professional reviews were negative due to the fact that Sun didn't stress the consumer JRE, but I digress.
  I think just recognition that a problem exists is a great first step from Sun and I congratulate you guys for picking up on that!
  It is also great that you realize the importance of providing scripts and tools for detecting JRE installations, I wish you could provide reference WAR files that would show a web site detecting and delivering Java content properly. Hopefully as an open source project so the JavaScript wizards in the community can help.
  I hope that you will solve the administrator permissions for install issue, its IMO a far bigger issue than download size. I also hope startup time will be reduced considerably, I read a slide where the presenter said that Java shouldn't be loaded on startup because it will take too much memory?
  How much memory is that out of a 1gb machine?
  Everyone does things like that (and provides an option to disable these things), please consider that option since the first time an Applet is loaded is often a terrible user experience...

  Posted by: vprise on May 17, 2007 at 10:34 PM

• Great! Is there any "alpha preview" version of this JRE available? Or
  when it can become available? Is it one of "dev.java.net" projects?

  Thanks

  Posted by: maxz1 on May 18, 2007 at 01:06 AM

• Great, smaller startup time and modularization support is most important - don't waste any time. We've waited very long for these features...

  Posted by: wzberger on May 18, 2007 at 01:40 AM

• I was wondering if there was a way to force the download of runtime dependencies before running our swing app. The last thing I want the users to see is a downloading classes.. type delay when they click the save button for the first time (or worse yet a 404 error). This brings up the issue of how to define these dependencies? If I was using JWS I'd like any JRE classes touched upon by my eager jars also downloaded during the initial install.

  Same kind of thing for wireless or locations that have strict / unsupported / password enabled firewalls or just plain unreliable internet support.. I guess you'd advise sticking with the off line JRE if external connections are likely to be an issue. But how will the options be presented on the Get Java site -- will users be given an obvious simple choice?

  I'd mirror the admin privileges issues, which'll often stop any updates dead as changes raises costs to the organisation. Locked down desktops and cooperate standard images (ones that either don't include Java or a very old version) are also pretty common. In these kinds of environs the automatic download of applications and updates isn't very popular. Will it be possible to specify automatic downloads from a machine within inside a secured intranet? it might prove more acceptable to hand a little control back.

  Often you're only option here is often to ship a runtime with your application so an article on how much we can do with distributing and otherwise stripping down an OpenJDK runtime would also be helpful. Are we free to do anything with it?
  

  Posted by: osbald on May 18, 2007 at 02:14 AM

• Thanks Ethan !!!

  Big news !! I will be able to deploy my swing web start apps ina a fashion way. Also writing a lot of swing applets and avoid these AJAX javascript/XML mesh up !!!

  Thanks a lot, these are the best NEWS for all swing developers arround the world who cannot write applets due to jre size and start up issues !!!

  Please keep on working on it !!!!
  big thanks again !

  Posted by: aleixmr on May 18, 2007 at 07:13 AM

• This is great news. In my mind, this announcement goes hand in hand with JavaFX, since the biggest issue with JavaFX (or so everyone complains about) is that of "frictionless" install and VM size.
  

  Posted by: adepue on May 18, 2007 at 08:37 AM

• +1 to maxz1. I'd really like to kick the tires. One of my big concerns is that it must be easy for deployers. The current approach, of giving deployers instructions such as this one http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/javaws/developersguide/launch.html, isn't going to cut it.

  Posted by: cayhorstmann on May 18, 2007 at 11:44 AM

• How exactly is a smaller download to improve startup time? Sure it can be masked a bit by the fact that you have to download less what about the actual loading time? That is not going to change just by modularizing the JRE is it?

  Posted by: suryad on May 18, 2007 at 12:02 PM

• Hey all:

  To help clear up the details here, I just posted an article that goes into a bit more detail on the features in this release. Check out http://weblogs.java.net/blog/chet/archive/2007/05/consumer_jre_le.html.

  
  Chet.
  

  Posted by: chet on May 18, 2007 at 02:36 PM

• A smaller JRE means a faster startup because most of the JRE startup time is due to I/O. If you have to load a smaller JAR file you are going to get much better startup times.

  Gili

  Posted by: cowwoc on May 18, 2007 at 04:09 PM

• Question: Why is Ethan the only one working on Java Kernel? I'm sure he loves it and he is doing an amazing job but I would love to see Sun throw more Engineers at this project to make it go faster. There should be more than enough sub-tasks to divide amongst different people :)

  I'm sorry, you just got me very excited about this project :) I want it *now* :)
  Gili

  Posted by: cowwoc on May 18, 2007 at 04:16 PM

• Ethan, this is good news. However another thing that is also needed to compete in the Flash/Silverlight space is multi-media playback / capture support. The last version of the JMF is not competitive in this area.. any plans for a better media framework in the Consumer JRE?

  Posted by: manjuka on May 18, 2007 at 05:39 PM

• 1 to maxz1. I'd really like to kick the tires. One of my big concerns is that it must be easy for deployers. The current approach, of giving deployers instructions such as this one http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/javaws/developersguide/launch.html, isn't going to cut it.
  Already being addressed, see chet's excellent post or my own notes linked to earlier.

  Basically there's going to be a whole new set of JavaScript calls you can use, plus a new plugin to make it more seemless.

  There's also GetJava.exe for standalone apps.

  Augusto

  Posted by: augusto on May 18, 2007 at 06:00 PM

• Provide a server with Java download bundle in china is better. The original way of JRE download oftern failed for the long-waited internet speed from china to usa.

  Posted by: zfqjava on May 19, 2007 at 12:03 AM

• An awesome feature would be to allow developers to deploy their apps against a given version of the JVM, and the 4-5MB of the JRE that is needed for that app could ship with it, and when installed onto the end users machine, be joined up with whatever other parts of the JRE had been installed by previous versions.

  The eventual goal of course would be to subversively deploy the whole JRE through little mini-deployments. :-D

  My group is working on a full desktop application writen in Java, and having an easy way like that to deploy the parts of the JRE that we use would be awesome.

  Is this kernel functionality also going to be available for apps that do an end user install?

  Posted by: devlinbentley on May 19, 2007 at 10:44 PM

• Rock on, Ethan and team. A modular rt.jar has been a long time coming, but it's not too late to make desktop Java great.

  Posted by: colmsmyth on May 24, 2007 at 02:07 PM

• "The 'iPhone effect' has struck again -- only this time it's the "JavaFX effect". We announced a bunch of exciting things at JavaOne 2007, but the news of JavaFX has inspired so much coverage and discussion that it's hard for anything else to get any press time."

  This is pretty much Sun's doing. As noted, most of the JavaFX backlash regards deployment or rather the lack of a 'consumer JRE' to fulfill the promise of JavaFX. But it was understandably downplayed well because it's not available. My concern is that Sun not rush a release of this consumer JRE as an update to Java 6 without getting input from developers who have experience in fitting JVMs in embedded environments and without consulting the modularity experts. We've waited far too long to get it wrong and if JavaFX is to seriously compete with Flash and Silverlight, it's critical that all the issues raised be addressed.

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