Simon Morris's Blog: Deployment Archives

The first involved a currently existing Java desktop application, a project originally developed at another university which somehow seems to have landed on my desk. The client brought the project to us, requesting a ground up re-write. The reason was made abundantly clear in the opening paragraph of their requirements document:

"The software language must not be Java, as in previous tests this has proved to be temperamental with types of hardware and various accessories."

Note how the software wasn't to blame, nor the original programmers, nor the hardware or OS. The problem is assumed to be 'Java'!

Does Size Matter?

Posted by javakiddy on September 15, 2006 at 02:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (21)

There was an interesting exchange on the recent Java Posse pod cast about the Java Kernel project, and how important size is to the JRE download. (Hmm, that's the second JP plug in as many months -- I wonder if I qualify for a Posse t-shirt or something? :) They referenced Robert Cooper's thought provoking blog which compares download sizes for various products, thus:

JRE 1.5.0 Windows offline installation:   16.00 MB
Adobe Acrobat 7.0.8:                      27.7 MB
Real Player 10.5:                         13.5 MB
.NET 1.1:                                 23.1 MB

This got me thinking: is the problem more to do with Psychology than actual byte size?

In shops, products are regularly sold at a penny under the pound (dollar/whatever.) We get an awkward 19.99 rather than a nice round 20, because the discounted penny has some kind of strange mental trickery: we see only the 19 pounds and somehow subconsciously consider the product cheap(er).

Desktop Deployment Ideas

Posted by javakiddy on August 08, 2006 at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)

Thanks to JavaDB there's been a lot of noise recently about Java SE (is that what we're supposed to call it this week? :) and end user experience. Specifically, the time it takes to download the JRE onto a desktop computer, versus so-called rival technologies such as Flash. At the heart of this debate is a classic catch twenty-two conundrum: the more feature-rich SE becomes, the bigger it gets and the less likely it is to be seen as a short, sharp, convenient download by 'Joe Surfer', our archetypal end user.

It seems a lot of people agree that something should be done, but few go as far as to throw any concrete ideas into the metaphorical 'deployment hat'. I have little experience of developing deployment software. My only real interest in this field is as someone who writes Java applications, and therefore has to deal with desktop deployment issues as they currently stand. So for what it's worth, in the hopes of putting some extra flesh to the bones of this debate, here's a few random thoughts of mine...

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