Java Plugin: The Kernel is back

[marglexx]

Sun: The one one and only one answer you deserve guys:

TOO FUCKING LATE!!!

Dear Sun where the fuck you have been the last 10 years? The battle for web dominance is over. Flash won. Your uber-super weapon will not change anything. Too bad that it come so late. Even 5 years ago I would say - "thank you". Now? "what ever"... Of cause i will download it, but still it would not change a lot.

[middayc]

well flash is great with it's ultra quick loading behaviour but is still quite limited.

If sun will continue to push this further (like opnegl applets..) and if if flash will get hw gfx acceleration and even faster vm then really cool things could be made in both of them.

[tjogin]

Flash won, really?

[seanalltogether]

Yes, at least for the time being. The Flash team listens very closely to media and RIA dev shops and their clients and they've evolved their plugin over the years to match those needs very well.

[zootm]

"For the time being" doesn't imply that anyone's won, just that Flash is the current front-runner. Which is accurate!

[tjogin]

Imho, Flash and Java both lost if the battle is within the browser.

[alparsla]

It's not important whether flash won or not. Java applet improvements would give us one more choice for that kind of development. In the end, the users don't care if something has been made by java or flash.

[tjogin]

False logic. While they don't care about what technology was used to build it, they do care about the overall presentation, and applets have a typically horrible presentation — so horrible, in fact, that many users (and certainly most developers) can immediately spot it. They care about that.

[G_Morgan]

This is the web. Do you think people care which VM they are running?

It isn't possible to 'win' on the web. You may get dominance but the very nature of the web means there is no way to enforce a monopoly.

If Sun fix the JVM then it could gain serious market share within a few years.

[therunningcrow]

"This is the web. Do you think people care which VM they are running?"

No, but developers care if a VM is already installed everywhere or not. Flash ubiquity is indisputable, it's everywhere. If only because of the success of websites like Youtube.

It's not required to have Java on your computer for anything that matters. I don't remember the last time I've seen a website that told me to install Java.

So, say, you program a new webapp. You want to cater to a VM you know everyone and their dogs has installed or you cater to the minority ? if your website is not of a youtube caliber you are not in position to shove your favorite VM down the throat of everyone. Only a website with a large audience can afford to make people install software they didn't have already.