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Really?

I thought these guys were one of the first. They had CSS2 support in... 1999?

But they aren't releasing a free-to-the-masses browser, and it looks like the company hasn't been doing much lately.

As someone who writes software to view PDFs, I can tell you this is completely pointless, since anything that saves scanned documents into PDF is really storing it as a TIFF image inside of the PDF anyway. The PDF container adds useful features for metadata, and is well documented, so shouldn't add any future-proof issues. And the overhead is probably a few kilobytes.

If you do decide to go the Java route have a look at Seam and Ice faces. The combination of the two is very powerful and both are open source.

On the topic of Java and Ajax you should check out icefaces, its a great Ajax framework and its completely free, and does not require any javascript programming.

Check out their Component Showcase.

On the topic of Java and Ajax you should check out icefaces, its a great Ajax framework and its completely free, and does not require any javascript programming.

Check out their Component Showcase.

Basically, the PDF standard allows for a lot of ways to access data on your local machine, in databases, and through your web browser. It also has mechanisms for running JavaScript, and even executing arbitrary local programs. Some of these things require a user to click on a link in a PDF, and some require just openning the PDF or visiting a specific page in the PDF.

Many of these features are quite helpful for corporate clients, but maybe shouldn't be allowed by default.

In retrospect, some of the other free 3rd part PDF viewers, that don't support those fancy features, might be better for people to use:

http://www.icesoft.com/products/icepdf.html

• Demos
• Download

• Demos
• Download

• Demos
• Download

Found a good demo link Here

If your a Java coder Icesoft has a great AJAX framework icefaces.

An interesting option is ICEfaces. It leverages the standard J2EE JavaServer Faces (JSF) component framework to develop AJAX-enabled web apps using standard Java IDEs. You just use their components directly, no JavaScript development required. It also supports a really nifty "server-push" feature where the server-based application can asynchronously update the browser UI.

If your using Java and want a good Ajax framework. Check out Icefaces

It's currently in alpha release.

Sorry about the problems with iTunes on Linux. But, you can download ICEpdf, a Java based PDF viewer, for free:

http://download.icesoft.com/newregistration.php

AJAX doesn't have to break the web. ICEfaces maintains a live DOM of the application at all times which can be served to scripts if desired.

1) It won't run on my 500Mhz Dell without making the internet feel like I'm slogging through stiff pudding. (No, Firefox doesn't; I'm running a highly tweaked Linux

If you have Sun Java installed and properly configured, click here to launch ICEBrowser. You might be surprised at its speed.

3) Can you imagine a JVM interpreting javascript?? We're talking slow.

You might want to pass that on to the Mozilla guys. I think they're still under the impression that they wrote a fast engine to do JavaScript in Java.

Discover the beauty of gcc+(wxWindows|GTK+) and build accordingly.

Oh, My Eyes! MY EYES! (I kid, I kid!)

1) It won't run on my 500Mhz Dell without making the internet feel like I'm slogging through stiff pudding. (No, Firefox doesn't; I'm running a highly tweaked Linux

If you have Sun Java installed and properly configured, click here to launch ICEBrowser. You might be surprised at its speed.

3) Can you imagine a JVM interpreting javascript?? We're talking slow.

You might want to pass that on to the Mozilla guys. I think they're still under the impression that they wrote a fast engine to do JavaScript in Java.

Discover the beauty of gcc+(wxWindows|GTK+) and build accordingly.

Oh, My Eyes! MY EYES! (I kid, I kid!)

I've programmed quite a bit in Java.

So you did a few applets back in the day?

It's surprisingly fast -- for an interpreted language.

Java is not interpreted, nor has it been for a VERY long time. If you seriously programmed in it, then you would know this.

Which basically means it runs 5x slower than native code instead of 30x slower.

Do I have to yank out the benchmarks that prove that this is nonsense?

Of course, this might not be very noticeable for something like Azureus which is basically a GUI bolted on to some network code

More utter nonsense. "Some network code"? The network code in BitTorrent is quite extensive. Java was used because it has a very good implementation of networking APIs.

most of which is native code that is part of the JVM or the OS

Now you're just being disingenous. A network stack is always only as good as the stack implementation. Yanking that card out is ridiculous because all calls eventually fall to the system services. If your point mattered, then all programs except for encryption and PI calculating loops would run at the same speed regardless of what they did behind the scenes.

However, you will notice that the GUI is fairly sluggish compared to a native application, especially if your processor is not very fast.

No, no I haven't. Not since the bad old days of applets. And up until recently I used a PIII 733.

If you wrote firefox in Java, it would be a major memory hog and also very slow.

A memory hog? Perhaps. (FireFox isn't a slouch itself, in case you haven't noticed.) Very slow? No. But don't take my word for it. Try it yourself.

I work at a company called ICEsoft Technologies, on the ICEpdf team. We just use our own PDF viewer instead of waiting for Acrobat Reader.

You can grab the trial download of the cross-platform Java viewer application for free. It says it's for 30 days, but there is no time limit anymore.

http://www.icesoft.com/products/icepdf.html

And your registration email address is completely confidential.

I was just using the Icesoft Java web browser and the Fluendo media player. These are both big applications written in 100% pure Java. They both don't have buffer overflows because Java doesn't have buffers (in the C sense). How many security holes do we need to see every week?

The safest and best thing is to use a real VM, like the JVM. Another alternative is to use something like Cyclone which also doesn't allow unsafe memory operations.

To all the ditto-heads who keep on saying "if it's not in C, it's too slow", wasn't there just an article on Slashdot a few days ago about full-motion video players written in pure Java? Surely a jpeg here and there shouldn't be too much of a problem?

Check out http://www.icesoft.com/, they a have 100% pure Java browser (click on Demos) which is very good, and about as fast as any other browser.

Actually there are a couple of other web-browsers out there, and some of them are written in Java. IMHO the best of these is currently the ICEBrowser by ICEsoft at http://www.icesoft.com/. What I like best about it is that it is actually quite fast, despite being written in Java. And as for following standards it is pretty up-to-date and comparable to Netscape, Mozilla and Internet Explorer.

Some not-so-nice things though, it is a commercial product and not a free browser at the moment. The ICEsoft focus is also on making an embeddable browser for other products and as such doesn't have a glossy interface.

It is currently in (downloadable) beta right now and is supposedly going to be released first thing in december which might be a place to stop by then..

But still it is an important browsing-alternative for those keen on Java.