Web Start anyone?

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No-Spam at No-Spam.com - 05 Nov 2005 06:50 GMT

At the risk of a religious war, I'm trying to get feedback on the [longer
term] viability of using Sun's Web Start to facilitate Java on the desktop.

Years back, we were heavily invested in Applets, which obviously have fallen
out of vogue. When Web Start technology became main-stream, we had no cause
to use it for commercial solutions. We now are looking seriously at several
option for multi-platform desktop / client support ... prefering the richness
of a traditional GUI over the web but cannot overlook AJAX as a viable option.

Googling leads to countless unrelated posts. Is it possible to get quality
feedback on this; that is traditional GUIs vs Web for application interfaces.
Obviously everyone wants web, but given the responsive nature of traditonal
GUI apps, I / we suspect that these would be welcomed over HTML.

Hoping to get feedback without rat-holes.

Thanx in advance.

Phi

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Andrew Thompson - 05 Nov 2005 07:41 GMT

> At the risk of a religious war,

There is always a risk of that, when cross-posting to
c.l.j.advocacy, which is more geared to 'arguments as
to who's/what is better'.

Note that c.l.j.developer is not carried by as many servers
as c.l.j.programmer, and is not one of the major java groups,
see list of the major groups here..
<http://www.physci.org/codes/javafaq.jsp#groups>

>...I'm trying to get feedback on the
> [longer term] viability of using Sun's Web Start to facilitate Java on
> the desktop.

I think Sun's support of Webstart is about as assured as
their support of Java itself - take that as you will.
....

> ...We now are looking
> seriously at several option for multi-platform desktop / client support
> ... prefering the richness of a traditional GUI over the web but cannot
> overlook AJAX as a viable option.

What I would want to know is, what is the Java
dependent thick client bringing to the application
that HTML/JS/Ajax lacks?

JS/HTML based GUI's can be quite slick, and are
often quicker to download and start-up. Only if
the GUI was so complex that it outstripped what might
be achieved with DHTML, or that the download of
supporting JS becomes larger that the classes, would
I seriously look to the Java GUI.

> Hoping to get feedback without rat-holes.

What is a 'rat-hole'?

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Scott Ellsworth - 07 Nov 2005 20:07 GMT

> > ...We now are looking
> > seriously at several option for multi-platform desktop / client support
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
> supporting JS becomes larger that the classes, would
> I seriously look to the Java GUI.

I have found, though, that getting a good ui together with AJAX is
harder than building one with Swing. I suspect that will change - Swing
has been out a while and has a head start - but for the short term, I
would fear having to build all of my UI based on client side javascript.

Scott

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Scott Ellsworth
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Java and database consulting for the life sciences

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Steve Sobol - 08 Nov 2005 05:42 GMT

> I have found, though, that getting a good ui together with AJAX is
> harder than building one with Swing. I suspect that will change - Swing
> has been out a while and has a head start - but for the short term, I
> would fear having to build all of my UI based on client side javascript.

I have yet to try any AJAX projects, although I'd like to mess around with
AJAX - but I don't see why you couldn't build "dialogs" and "windows" using
HTML DIVs and show and hide them when necessary. I don't think it's
necessarily a big deal.

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Andrew Thompson - 08 Nov 2005 05:59 GMT

> I have yet to try any AJAX projects, although I'd like to mess around
> with AJAX - but I don't see why you couldn't build "dialogs" and
> "windows" using HTML DIVs and show and hide them when necessary. I don't
> think it's necessarily a big deal.

(chuckles) showing and hiding page elements is harder though, than..

window.alert( "The message is.." );

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The Ghost In The Machine - 08 Nov 2005 17:00 GMT

In comp.lang.java.advocacy, Andrew Thompson
<seemysites@www.invalid>
wrote
on Tue, 08 Nov 2005 05:59:02 GMT
<G8Xbf.11500$Hj2.11402@news-server.bigpond.net.au>:

>> I have yet to try any AJAX projects, although I'd like to mess around
>> with AJAX - but I don't see why you couldn't build "dialogs" and
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>
> window.alert( "The message is.." );

Not much harder. Now getting them in the right place... :-)

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Steve Sobol - 09 Nov 2005 02:13 GMT

well, yeah it is. :>

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Scott Ellsworth - 08 Nov 2005 22:46 GMT

> > I have found, though, that getting a good ui together with AJAX is
> > harder than building one with Swing. I suspect that will change - Swing
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> HTML DIVs and show and hide them when necessary. I don't think it's
> necessarily a big deal.

It is certainly possible, but I have found that the toolkits are less
mature. Stuff I would get from the toolbox in swing, I have to write in
Javascript. I am told, though, that the DWR project is trying to expose
Spring beans, which might result in a lot of power being built in at the
framework level.

Scott

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Scott Ellsworth
scott@alodar.nospam.com
Java and database consulting for the life sciences

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Steve Sobol - 09 Nov 2005 02:16 GMT

> It is certainly possible, but I have found that the toolkits are less
> mature. Stuff I would get from the toolbox in swing, I have to write in
> Javascript.

Sure, but as you just said, it's a question of maturity. AJAX hasn't been
around for anywhere near as long as Swing has, or even as long as newer
toolkits like SWT.

> I am told, though, that the DWR project is trying to expose
> Spring beans, which might result in a lot of power being built in at the
> framework level.

That'll be interesting to play with. I haven't messed around with Spring yet.

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Mark Thornton - 05 Nov 2005 09:51 GMT

> At the risk of a religious war, I'm trying to get feedback on the
> [longer term] viability of using Sun's Web Start to facilitate Java on
> the desktop.

In my experience, the latest version of WebStart works very well. I
would expect it to remain as long as Java does.

Mark Thornton

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Roedy Green - 05 Nov 2005 10:45 GMT

On Fri, 04 Nov 2005 23:50:20 -0600, No-Spam at No-Spam.com
<nospam@nospam.com> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who
said :

>At the risk of a religious war, I'm trying to get feedback on the [longer
>term] viability of using Sun's Web Start to facilitate Java on the desktop.

Let's say Sun drops the ball on Java Web Start. Your apps STILL work
fine as ordinary apps. You just have to buy an installer such as
ZeroG or compile them with Jet and use their installer.

As they get he kinks ironed out, it is so much better than any other
way of distributing code. JAWS's biggest problem is most people don't
know how easy it is.

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Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Java custom programming, consulting and coaching.

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