Java Applets II

The past couple of weeks I wrote quite a bit about Applets and the Java browser plug-in. I was pretty sure that Sun would come up with something great. At least that was my impression after reading a lot and checking out the new Consumer JRE aka Java SE 6 Update N.

However, after I read an interview on InfoQ with Nicolas Lorain from Sun, my optimism disappeared. It is my impression, that Sun is not interested to bring Applets back to life.

First mistake, in my opinion, is that Firefox 2 won't be supported. Apparently Sun thinks everybody will upgrade to Firefox 3 right away. In the interview Nicholas uses technical details as an excuse.

Second mistake: Sun puts off Safari and Opera support. I do understand that it's not Sun's responsibility to supports those browsers, but in my opinion they should give it a thought. Making it easy to adopt the plug-in is a first step, but in order to bring Applets back to life and improve the Java browser experience it's not enough.

If you wondered why the Consumer JRE was renamed to Java SE 6 Update N here's the reason: The new shiny browser plug-in will be turned off by default! Apperently Sun thinks that every consumer will know, that they have to switch on the new plug-in, after hitting a website and looking at the Java Applet loading screen for minutes, until the JVM finally decided to start up.