Sun & Google cooperation how?

[Bombadil]

Although I'm no friend of another nearly monopolist like Google, I realize that Google has got the (Internet) power to challenge M$ in some delicate ways.

Anybody remembers the net computer idea (Oracle's?) ? Or the hype named "The Internet will make all the people's life better"? Or "Winblows everywhere also means ruling the Internet" ? Or ...)

Anybody with an idea on what these two companies will coorperate? Press conference in about six hours?

There's many rumors (Open-/Staroffice via Web, Sun servers for Google, etc).... so? :-)

[kappa]

most probably would be staroffice through the browser, google has been hinting for quite a while that they want to set something like this up.

[nonnus29]

It's so odd to me that all the youngsters around today were never aware of the 'threat' of the 'net pc' or whatever.  Plus many old timers have forgotten.  It really makes the all the linux/windows wars seem trite.

A distributed office suite over the internet would be one hell of a shot across MS bows.

Could it be browser based even today?

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[blahblahblahh]

A distributed office suite over the internet would be one hell of a shot across MS bows.

Several have been working and heading toward a gold release for last 12 months, at least 1 major free one based on OO, and at lest one commercial one based on OO, both serious.

Could it be browser based even today?

Easily. I've done the parts myself before (used to specialise in this kind of thing), it's just a lot of work to get the whole together, and been waiting for various API's to iron out their bigger bugs.

[princec]

"Under the agreement, Sun will include the Google Toolbar as an option in its consumer downloads of the Java Runtime Environment on http://java.com. In addition, the companies have agreed to explore opportunities to promote and enhance Sun technologies, like the Java Runtime Environment and the OpenOffice.org productivity suite."

Tumbleweed, tolling bell, cackling old lady on deserted veranda...

And is it my imagination or has the JRE just grown a little bit bigger again with some cruft we don't want?

Cas

[swpalmer]

Could it be browser based even today?

Easily. I've done the parts myself before (used to specialise in this kind of thing), it's just a lot of work to get the whole together, and been waiting for various API's to iron out their bigger bugs.

Let's pray it never happens.  Browser-based "applications" suck universally.  Anything beyond a simple form in a browser is quite likely to be garbage.  Though Google seems to be pretty good at pushing the limits, the browser is a horrible tool to implemment anything like an office suite.  I'm sure it will be attempted though... and the browsers will be extended to do all sorts of things that they should just never touch.  The end result will be a massive proliferation of security vulnerabilities and crappy "web" apps that never work right (or well).

It's hard enough just to get people to fix the browsers to render a simple chunk of HTML correctly.  Now people want to make them all into some twisted VM with XML as the language?  Keep apps out of the browser.  Use the right tool for the job. (Web Start anyone?)

[anarchotron]

AMEN to that.

[shawnkendall]

I suggest boning up on the Web's future ;-)

RIA's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Internet_Application

or Web 2.0 if you prefer...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Either way, this Google/Sun thing falls in there, and in terms of usability for large (read mass) audience, it is being readily adopted...

[ryanm]

Let's pray it never happens.  Browser-based "applications" suck universally. 

I agree here for the most part, but on the other hand, Google seems really good at getting high-interactivity interfaces into a browser.
The GMail interface is excellent, as is the Google home page. Click on "Personalise your Google homepage", and then drag each of the components around, marvelling at how it all happens in an intelligent, non-reloading way.
So if anyone can do it, Google can.

[princec]

Mere trickery. Which relies on some hienously complex and specialist infrastructure.

Cas

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[shawnkendall]

Mere trickery. Which relies on some hienously complex and specialist infrastructure.

Cas

I guess you are impling this is a "bad" thing :-)

That quote would also hold true of all MMOs...(and most games to outsiders)

[gregof]

Google uses  a technology called AJAX ( Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) that avoids the "fill form -> post -> wait for reply - update" cycle  that is so annoying to users.
I think that with this technology we will se some very interesting web applications the coming year.
 Some inf on AJAX: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-ajax1/?ca=dgr-lnxw01Ajax

// Gregof

[princec]

The funny thing is, Ajax is just a load of rubbish compared even to Flash. All of this stuff is rubbish compared to Flash in fact.

Cas

[blahblahblahh]

The funny thing is, Ajax is just a load of rubbish compared even to Flash. All of this stuff is rubbish compared to Flash in fact.

Cas

(as someone who is very heavily using AJAX) that's - IMO - rubbish.

• AJAX needs no client
• AJAX works on *every* browser, even mac-IE, even Safari
• AJAX has no big download
• AJAX only requires you know how to write HTML+CSS
• AJAX has low memory requirements
• AJAX does NOT force you to use a complete piece-of-sh** server thats useless for everything - it's just plain old (X)HTML.

...just for starters.

PS: when I said this was all done before and/or being done, I meant the INTELLIGENT integration of document editing into HTML browsers, not using special clients and VM's. You can do a lot with a word document whose native file-format is XML (this is how OO stores word docs), especially when you have smart pipelines set up for auto-export to PDF, PNG, etc - and can use simple WYSIWYG editors to do editing to the same level of quality as a moderate word-processor *and* using AJAX you have autosave.

I have a spec sitting on my desk for doing an offline version, that will work for people with laptops who keep disconnecting and reconnecting to the corporate VPN. Looks like it will work great, it's just a question of whether we have the time to implement it, or if an off-the-shelf alternative becomes avaialble soon enough we dont need to.

[swpalmer]

• AJAX only requires you know how to write HTML+CSS

And HTML+CSS is an really stupid way to write APPLICATIONS.  It's designed for presentation, it is obscene to use it for application logic.

They're called "browsers" for a reason.  They are used to browse the net and display information... they are very poorly suited to creating and editing information.

I have yet to see a "web based application" that wasn't anything more than a long string of ugly hacks.  You might be able to get it to work, sure...  You can say the same about perl

[blahblahblahh]

I have yet to see a "web based application" that wasn't anything more than a long string of ugly hacks.  You might be able to get it to work, sure...  You can say the same about perl

Not defending, but just out of interest, have you seen http://protopage.com ? it's an alpha release at best, but interesting.

[princec]

Vile.

Just look at the little bit of source it's easy to see. It's just a toy. The browsers that support this stuff are bloody heavyweight monsters and largely full of crashing bugs. Give me a JVM any day.


Cas

[blahblahblahh]

Vile.

Just look at the little bit of source it's easy to see. It's just a toy. The browsers that support this stuff are bloody heavyweight monsters and largely full of crashing bugs. Give me a JVM any day.

You mean, the only web browsers available?

And when you have a full GUI library that is as expressively powerful as XHTML (forget CSS for now), please let me know. Won't be much use until you add something as good as CSS/2, but still, it would be a start.

You should be comparing what the browser does more than anything else (layout + rendering) to an equivalent in the JVM, seeing as that's a major part of what this is about, not ignoring it.

[g666]

Not defending, but just out of interest, have you seen http://protopage.com ? it's an alpha release at best, but interesting.

heh, do i really want i personalized start page, have i not been asked if i do too many times before. 

I like apps to do a few things, and do them well. I dont won to run apps all squahed inside IE that crashes every so often for no reason.

It would be interesting to see a big fat application that actually does some think usuefull built on that type of thing.

[shawnkendall]

Jonathan's Schwartz latest blog hit on the Sun/Google stuff.
And down in there is Web 2.0, as early pointed out by me :-)

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan?entry=putting_the_sun_google_partnership

And for all the browser based app haters on here, here is a choice quote...

"And as more folks realize the deficiencies of a "submit button internet," Java's role is only growing."

[blahblahblahh]

And for all the browser based app haters on here, here is a choice quote...

"And as more folks realize the deficiencies of a "submit button internet," Java's role is only growing."

Here's one from a friend last week: "it took me 30 minutes to write a graphical game from scratch using AJAX in the browser, because I got to spend all that time writing code, and none of it [messing] about with working with GUI API's".

HTML+CSS+AJAX is much much quicker to write good UI's in than any standard GUI API I've ever seen. Developers flock to it because it increases productivity. This will continue so long as platforms like java have such poor GUI API's. Browser development is overcoming the problems of using a browser much much faster than Sun is overcoming the crapness of their API...

[kevglass]

Can we maybe see this game to judge the beauty of AJAX for ourselfs? I realise your friend might not want to show the public at large.

I've yet to see a web based game of any sort where I hadn't thought while playing it - "heh, this would be really cool if it had a proper client"

Kev

[Spasi]

Can we maybe see this game to judge the beauty of AJAX for ourselfs?

How can you judge the beauty of something that's not about graphics, but about asynchronous communication with the server? And it's not about application logic either, as swpalmer said, the logic stays on the server (that may run a JVM too). AJAX is simply about sending and receiving data asynchronously, nothing more or less.

Also, don't underestimate the power of HTML+CSS. There are lots of applications that couldn't be built with it, but there are also a lot that could and will be in the future.

[princec]

What was wrong with applets exactly? They promised to do all this stuff but for some mysterious reason it didn't work out that way (ah, wasn't it something to do with Microsoft?)

Just think about it for a moment. An applet that was simply an object covering the entire page would give the entire power of a Java client at its disposal. But for some reason this mickey mouse HTML+CSS travesty is the current buzz. Just look at the code and think about maintenance for a minute.

It might conceivably help if Java had an HTML4.0 renderer in Swing too of course

Cas

[Spasi]

What was wrong with applets exactly? They promised to do all this stuff but for some mysterious reason it didn't work out that way (ah, wasn't it something to do with Microsoft?)

Nothing was (is) wrong with applets. JRE availability is the problem, whereas browsers are everywhere.

Just look at the code and think about maintenance for a minute.

Code maintenance is greatly improved with CSS2 and IE's components (will be a W3C standard soon, I think).

It might conceivably help if Java had an HTML4.0 renderer in Swing too of course

That would be cool, although it wouldn't solve the JRE installation issue. I personally have no problem with Swing and I prefer it over HTML+CSS, but it urgently needs an Avalon+Sparkle equivalent.

[princec]

See, it all comes down to that "distribution of the JVM" problem again... Imagine if that JVM had been small enough to embed in Firefox what the situation would have been like today. Or built in to IE supplied in XP SP3 or Windows Update. But no, instead some daft new thing has come along before the original idea has even had a chance.

Cas

[erikd]

What is the situation with JRE distribution nowadays anyway? Anyone got some numbers?
My feeling is that it is much much better than before. On the old JEmu a few years ago I got *lots* of complaints that it didn't work because they didn't have a recent JRE (1.3 at the time). Now I get quite a lot of feedback on JEmu2, yet only one complained that it didn't work because of a JRE installation problem (and that one was on Linux, btw). Maybe this doesn't prove anything, therefor I'm quite interested in numbers.

[blahblahblahh]

What was wrong with applets exactly? They promised to do all this stuff but for some mysterious reason it didn't work out that way (ah, wasn't it something to do with Microsoft?)

non-zero loading time compared to web apge, capturing of mouse cursor, brekaing of the browser (you are no longer in browser, you are in JVM), etc.

But for some reason this mickey mouse HTML+CSS travesty is the current buzz. Just look at the code and think about maintenance for a minute.

Badly written code versions ARE a travesty, but if you know what you're doing...it's a decent and powerful layout and rendering engine.

Code maintenance is excellent (I say from experience; have you any?)

[g666]

is it not just that some things work well using AJAX (eg. google maps) and some things, (graphical games, large apps etc) dont., Java cant be used for everything. XD

[princec]

The RAC's route finder applet is an example of online map software that predates Google maps by many years and I expect that it's rather less of a headache to maintain.

Cas