Flash -vs- Applets

[Michael L Torrie]

On Thu, 2006-11-16 at 13:00 -0700, Shane Hathaway wrote:
> > I know that Java 7 is getting a lot of Applet/JApplet attention, so
> > I'm sure they'll improve things beyond where they are today.  But most
> > of the things you're asking for are either outside of the control of
> > Java, or exist in the JRE today.
> 
> Correct, but nonetheless these are major obstacles to overcome before 
> developers will feel comfortable about developing Java applets.  With 
> Sun's Java going GPL, it seems like the chance of solving the problems 
> is higher than before.

Unfortunately 90% of the world is only running the ancient MS version of
the JRE embedded in IE.  Getting Java 7 out to the world will be harder
as it will require a download of the JRE.  Of course with IE 7 and
Vista, there is no default JVM, so I guess you'd have to get users to
download and install the plugin anyway.  I guess the thing about flash
is that it's a very simple, one-click install that's not very big,
compared to Java with is around 10 MB I think.  That will make a
difference as to whether users will want to wait out a plugin download
just to view something on a site.  Studies recently showed that if a
page takes more than 4 seconds to display, users lose interest and move
on.

Michael


> 
> Shane
> 
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