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Comments · 8

  1. Re:Missed the Boat on Missing the Boat by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Insightful · on Java's Greatest Missed Opportunity?
    To add a few more specific rebuttals to my post:

    A common response to the "applets are dead" statement is "No they're not. I still use them." Applets aren't useless; people still create very impressive things with them. The Java Posse highlights one or more applets each week. The statement should instead read, "Applets are dead for Web RIAs." The installation process for the JRE and for any particular applet is not reliable enough for anyone to depend on them for a general-purpose website.

    That's basically a fancy way of saying they're dead while simultaneously arguing the opposite. People still write software for the Colecovision, but you don't see anyone talking about the "missed opportunity" to compete with the Playstation, do you?

    Desktop applications have also suffered, and left bad marks on Java in general, further sullying applets by association. I had an experience with a Java product called Memorex exPressit. The UI was terrible and buggy.

    Poor UIs have been a hallmark of Java Applications. While much of the blame does lie heavily on inexperienced programmers doing GUI work, there's also the matter of Microsoft's interference with the platform. One of the reasons for Java's early popularity in applications was because Microsoft provided an excellent AWT implementation that integrated with their platform. Which was exactly how Sun wanted it. The most experienced company with a platform (i.e. the vendor) would handle the specific implementation of the JVM. The Sun JVM was just a reference implementation, and was not intended for deployment.

    Then Microsoft went about their usual backstabbing and Sun didn't have a good feel for how to replace their expertise. The rest is history.

    Consider Corel's attempt to create a word processor using Java (I don't remember whether they were trying to port WordPerfect or write something from scratch). It was obviously too early to try it, since all they had was the AWT.

    Well, that and the fact that they were trying to write it as an Applet. I mean, you don't just take a full up office suite and cram it into a tiny portion of a Web Browser window! That's not exactly a recipe for a good interface. The Corel concept was good on paper, but the implementation was outright horrid. Unfortuantely, it was probably caused by the misconception that Java == Applets. Something that we programmers still struggle with today.

    OpenOffice is not written in Java, but in C++. I don't believe it was because the programmers wanted to struggle with the cross-platform issues presented by C++. It was speed, and perhaps the need to more directly control the underlying platform.

    Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that OpenOffice was based on StarOffice? You know, the Office Suite that was developed back in 1986? However, there are a number of modern OOo components that are written in Java. Database Access in particular is a lot better if you can rely on Java's APIs.

    The show-stopper was Java's lack of support for MP3s and multimedia in general. As Dick Wall of the Java Posse has pointed out numerous times, the Java Media Framework (JMF) has been virtually ignored for many years.

    Um... what? JMF is ignored because it's unnecessary. Java has Sound and MIDI APIs integrated into its core. MP3 support can be found in APIs like JavaLayer. Video has always been a problem, and not just Java. While there have always been solutions for standardized formats, the majority of video encoding/decoding takes advantage of proprietary codecs. Something that is not easy (or legal) to replicate. Linux makes use of a number of legal loopholes to bring us software like MPlayer and VLC. But these were never viable solutions for a straight-laced company like Sun. And the idea of better OS integration was something of an antithesis to Java technology. So Java focused on its strengths, not its weaknesses.
  2. Screw Winamp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Spyware Tunnels in on Winamp Flaw

    I've recently moved over to java-based jlGui
    http://www.javazoom.net/jlgui/jlgui.html
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/jlgui/
    It's cross-platform, portable, (USB thumb drive, anyone?) and it plays local mp3/ogg files, Shoutcast streams (*.pls), and Winamp playlists (*.m3u)
    It's great for running at my work where I have a personal network drive that follows me from PC to PC. I never need to install anything... I just double-click the jar file.
    I highly recommend giving it a shot if you're sick of updating Winamp all the time.

  3. Re:I guess... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative · on Winamp Down for the Count

    Here's an odd thought... why bother? Quite a few Winamp clones exist because the WinAMP design is not hard to replicate. It's really not much more than a way of loading, inspecting, and playing audio files from disk, http, or streaming servers. Here's a few example clones:

    jlGUI
    JAMP
    JahSing

  4. Re:JOrbis - Java Applet by #undefined · · Score: 1 · on Simplest Ogg Streaming Clients for non-Unix Users?

    in the vein of java applets try:
    jlguiapplet

    or somewhat similar, but a full java application (which can be almost instantly launched using webstart):
    jlgui

    i don't know how well they handle ogg streams, as i only use it to play ogg files stored on the same webserver as my personal installation of jlguiapplet.

    jlgui not as full featured as the popular winamp or my personal favorite foobar, but for sitting down at a computer other than my workstation and nearly instantly having an mp3/ogg player (without having to install/uninstall anything) nothing beats it.

  5. Re:JOrbis - Java Applet by #undefined · · Score: 1 · on Simplest Ogg Streaming Clients for non-Unix Users?

    in the vein of java applets try:
    jlguiapplet

    or somewhat similar, but a full java application (which can be almost instantly launched using webstart):
    jlgui

    i don't know how well they handle ogg streams, as i only use it to play ogg files stored on the same webserver as my personal installation of jlguiapplet.

    jlgui not as full featured as the popular winamp or my personal favorite foobar, but for sitting down at a computer other than my workstation and nearly instantly having an mp3/ogg player (without having to install/uninstall anything) nothing beats it.

  6. Re:If not mp3... by j3110 · · Score: 4, Informative · on Java Media Framework Drops MP3

    It's a media framework. That means it's not SUN's job to make it work with everything :) You can add your own plugin audio codecs. Think of it as a portable version of the Windows Media Codec registry. I'm sure there will be sites that you can download MP3 plugins for the JMF. I'm pretty sure Ogg already exists, but I'm not sure about that. ( JavaZoom claims they have some kind of a version)

    Expect to see lots of codec's for JMF provided by third parties, the way it should be. Should be because SUN's programmers don't have the time nor inclination (nor obligation) to learn every little detail about every little file format. It'll be better in the end to have a more dedicated support for each codec whilst keeping the portability and API static for all codecs.

  7. Re:not the reason?? by gnoshi · · Score: 3, Informative · on Java Media Framework Drops MP3

    As one would expect Thomson to say. What kind of poor-grade PR machines would they have to come up with anything less.

    Disclaimer: I am not a Java dev...
    That aside, there is a project to develop a Vorbis Java SPI, which (from the impression I get) makes Java decoding of vorbis easy, and fits a standard interface. Or something.

    gnoshi

  8. Javalayer MP3 Player by jpavel · · Score: 5, Informative · on Java Media Framework Drops MP3

    Fortunately, there is an open source Java MP3 decoder, JavaLayer that I've found to work quite nicely.