[thelist] Applets

Steve Cook sck at biljettpoolen.se
Wed Dec 6 02:04:35 CST 2000


Hi Kev,

I'd go with what Erika said for the most part. She gave some good site
recommendations for question 1.

2) It's an "Object Oriented" language and as such has a whole different way
of thinking to (say) VBScript. Check
http://evolt.org/index.cfm?menu=8&cid=542 for some views on OO programming.
My view is that it is a swine to learn, but then I've always been a
traditional procedural programming kinda guy!

3) Yes, there are LOTS of incompatibilities. Here are some I know of...
	Some browsers don't come with Java as standard (e.g. Netscape on
Linux)
	Text browsers will of course not support Java
	Many corporate firewalls block Java applets
	Poorly programmed Java causes memory leaks which crash browsers (my
bank's website crashes my Linux Netscape browser!)
	Sometimes people have inexplicable problems with Java on their
machines - I'm running Win2000 at work and I can't see ANY Java applets
because of some strange bug in my Java virtual machine.

4) I've used Java in sites for both navigational purposes and for "fun"
elements. Navigation with Java is a BAD thing because of the
incompatibilities mentioned above. Fun elements in Java are neither good nor
bad. Compared to (say) Flash or Shockwave, they aren't so pretty but the
functionality they give can be excellent. I've also been a user of Java
based applets that duplicate the functionality of a desktop program for
remote users. One company I worked for had a Java applet version of their
timekeeping software which could be used anywhere. That was a great use of
java (even though the software itself was pretty stinky!).

5) Java is a fully fledged programming language. It can be used to build
stand-alone programs as well as browser applets. These programs are
(supposed to be) cross-platform compatible and range in complexity from very
simple, to really quite complex (for instance the Nokia Development Kit for
WAP). However despite the claims that Java based programs can be nearly as
quick as C programs, imho they rarely are. The Nokia dev kit for instance
crawls along on a P200. There are quite a lot of free and not-so-free tools
available for developing Java. I've often seen Java development kits and
tutorials included with computer magazines (in Sweden admittedly!).

6) The other BIG use for Java is server-side programming. I don't have *so*
much experience with this, but my impression is that people either love it
or hate it! It requires a Java Server on the server machine and a whole load
of other hoops to jump through :-) So called Java Server Pages (JSP's) are
used on quite a lot of sites. I personally don't know what the advantages
are of them though and when I worked with developers who used them, I heard
a lot of complaints about problems with slightly different implementations
of the Java Virtual Machine on differenet machines!

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/programming/java/
http://www.webdeveloper.com/java/
http://gamelan.earthweb.com/


There - that should help you decide whether Java is for you :-)

.steve


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> -----Original Message-----
> From: kev.skindrill [mailto:kjs at ratking.co.uk]
> Sent: den 5 december 2000 22:16
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: [thelist] Applets
> 
<SNIP>
> 
> 1. Apparently I will need to learn Java if I want to write my 
> own applets,
> can anyone recommend a good site/book?
> 2. How hard a language is it to learn?
> 3. Apart from not having Java enabled, are there any browser
> incompatibilities?
> 4. What is the general opinion of these little programs, I 
> can't remember
> ever seeing a thread about it on the List?
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Kev
> 




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