Related link: https://jdic.dev.java.net/
JDesktop Integration Components (JDIC) allow better integration of the platform-provided web clients (mailer, browser) from inside Java. Looks like a good thing.
I whinged about Java's HTML component in a previous blog. While it would be best to have this plus to have a more modern HTML browser classes in Java, this is definitely a step forward. So well done, Sun. I guess the idea is that since every desktop platform has a browser, file browser, and mailer, Java does not abandon WORE (write once run everywhere) by providing better access to it.
Perhaps more importantly, the optimist in me sees hope in JDIC: that maybe someone in Sun is pushing towards providing the kinds of things that we desktop application developers need in Java now. Next if only they would provide a standard platform-specific launcher that that matches the max heap with the available RAM, allows subsequent invocation of an application to send parameters to the running one, and connects to status bars and system notifications: now that would be really great! (I don't have any hope that anyone will standardize a logging system for Java that remotely is usable for desktop applications, or that a system-pulse system can be provided by the JRE to allow applications to throttle back when PCs are congested due to other actions. But they are certainly the kinds of things that Java needs to be excellent: looking at the hard work done on the new Java memory model indicates that Sun is still more interested in how to support MPU systems rather than how to utilize RAM on single PCs better. Fie!) It looks like the kind of thing the java.net site might be a good home for.
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Not really WORA
Good point. I hope Apple spares someone for an afternoon or two to get Safari support up.
Apple's strategy of only providing newer versions of the Java on newer platforms does tend fragment its attractiveness as a platform for Java developers, I must say. We require JRE 1.4.1+: it is not available on OS X 10.1. We use JAI too, and it is not available on OS X 10.2. When you go to Apple developer seminars, they try to get you excited about the sometimes amazing performance enhancements, but then it hits you: oh, because this thing is tied to the new OS version, it we will have to wait a few years until user-adoption rates make it feasible to use: so probably we are better off ignoring it and going with some open source library we can deploy, even though it may duplicate functionality.
Actually, I have always thought WORA was pretty bogus: unless you write toy applications that conform to Java 1 perhaps. Java is wonderful for multi-platform support (I have had products running on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X with almost no porting pain), but obviously it only works when the version of Java libraries you are using is available. The answer perhaps includes disconnecting as many libraries as possible from the standard JREm so that they can be used wih as many older versions of the library as possible. It should be the application's responsibility to make sure that the correct versions of non-core libraries are installed, not the JREs.
Not really WORA
JDIC is a set of native components. So, for example, there is no Mac version of JDIC. Email to the team elicited the response - it's open source, we'd love to have you help provide a Mac port. This isn't really WORA - it's When you write it it'll run there. Currently the supported platforms are the Sun big three: Solaris, Linux, and Windows.