Posts Tagged ‘sun’

Back in the late nineties, when many websites still looked like this, the people at Sun had a vision that the web could be so much more than static HTML. They created the concept of Java Applets that could be placed on webpages to make them richer and do stuff that HTML just couldn't. Like adding animated menus and hideous buttons.

This was quite the cool thing to have at the time, but there were a few fundamental problems. One: it was horribly slow. Nobody really cared because at 28K8 modem speed on a 486, anything was slow, so the few extra seconds it took to load the Java stuff was accepted, at least for a while. But the second problem was that it was quite unstable. More often than not, it would crash your browser. (There's actually about a 1 in 4 chance that the above link still crashed your browser today, 10 years later; the significant improvement is that Firefox will have remembered what page it crashed on and will let you re-experience the crash upon restart. Twice the fun.)

So with most Java developers not getting beyond the 'L33T, I HAZ CREATED A BUTTON!!' stage and HTML, CSS and JavaScript gradually becoming rich enough to create hideous buttons without Java Applets, the technique more or less died. (Well, Java itself didn't; it firmly grasped on to the enterprise software market because the former button developers had kids to feed.)

We then had a few years of plain HTML/CSS/JavaScript happiness with the occasional Flash animation, when suddenly the big guys thought it was time to enrich the web again. Not with Java of course, which people still associated with fancy buttons and crashing browsers, but with new shiny technologies like Silverlight and Flex. (Sure, both Microsoft and Adobe are in favor of open standards as long as they can each have their own standard).

The concept is very much the same, both Flex and Silverlight allow you to create buttons! But this time, we use a Three Letter Acronym, because *THAT* was what Java failed, the lack of a proper Three Letter Acronym!

We call this modern variant of user interface richness: RIA, for Rich Internet Application (maybe it was supposed to stand for 'Rather Implemented an Applet' though). Like in the past, the idea is to do stuff in the browser that HTML won't let you.

Sun, who years ago created the RIA avant la lettre with their Java applets, must have watched this trend in amazement. And now that RIA's are in the early adopter stage and have enough momentum to become mainstream, it's time for them to give it another try. They are relaunching the applet idea with what they call 'JavaFX' (come on, that name just sounds like 'fancy button' all over again). Details on this can be read in this article on TechCrunch.

Interesting times are ahead. With Google Chrome possibly igniting the Third Browser War, we'll also see the RIA wars, where JavaFX, Silverlight and Flex will battle to become the dominant technology to create rich internet applications. One potential outcome: they all fail and the outcome is an improved, richer version of HTML and plain old JavaScript. Another potential outcome: they will all find their niche and we'll get incredibly cool apps. Back in the days of the Applet, the web was relatively immature. We weren't ready for real web applications. Maybe that is why Java Applets didn't survive the Button stage.

This time around however, more and more applications are webbased, so there's quite a big chance that this time, RIA technologies will catch on and outgrow their Button stages and give us some really compelling browser experience.

Time will tell. Let's look back at this in another 10 years or so.

So one day, Scott McNealy, founder and chairman of Sun, read in his morning newspaper how the use of Java was rapidly diminishing, courtesy of something called 'The LAMP Stack'. Furiously, he called his accountant.

Scott: "I knew this Java thing was a bad idea in the first place! I see only one solution. We need to buy this Lamp!"
Accountant: "Euh, LAMP is not a company. It's an acronym. It's Linux , Apache, MySQL and PHP"
Scott: "Then buy me Linux!"
Accountant: "But we still have this Solaris thing.."
Scott: "Then buy me Apache!"
Accountant: "That's a foundation. Nothing to buy there."
Scott: "Then buy me MySQL!"
Accountant: "We don't do databases."
Scott: "It's a database?"
Accountant: "What rock have you been living under?"
Scott: "Sweet. I can own the Lamp AND piss off Oracle at the same time!" (waves fake plastic magic wand) "Make it so!"

And so it happened.

Ten days later, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was reading the CIO Magazine, and read about this interesting thing called PHP, that according to the author you could use to write "WHAT?!". "WHAT?!", obviously a highly advanced and evolved version of "Hello World", caught his attention. So he called Bill Gates.

Steve: "Hey, you heard about this PHP thing?"
Bill: "Pee Age Pee? You're not that old yet, are you?"
Steve: "What? No, wait, it's a programming language, apparently better than ASP.NET."
Bill: "Who cares if it's better. I mean; we made the worst operating systems ever and still rule. (Checked out Leopard yet? It is SO cool.)"
Steve: "I don't know Bill... remember that internet thing that we didn't know about years ago? Kind of nearly missed the boat there."
Bill: "Right. Didn't we solve that in the same way? Worst browser, highest market share, that sort of thing?"
Steve: "Yes we did, but then we also didn't know about this 'mp3' thing until it was too late."
Bill: "We did manage to make Zune the worst player, but somehow we're not market leader. Guess we got sloppy?"
Steve: "Maybe it's just different times. Maybe we should have a different strategy."
Bill: "Ok, so let's just buy PHP then."
Steve: "It's not a company. But Encarta says it's written by a Rasmus Lerdorf."
Bill: "So let's hire him."
Steve: "Tried that. Didn't want to join. Can't blame him, works at Yahoo."
Bill: "Then I guess we'll have to buy Yahoo."

So it happened.

Two of the most controversial announcements of this month, and both appear to be part of devious plots to take over the LAMP stack. What's next? My prediction: Red-Hat buys Zend; Oracle buys Red-Hat; Sun and IBM join forces to buy Oracle, Microsoft buys Sun, kills IBM and peace is restored in the galaxy.

P.S. Can you imagine Microsoft running sites like Flickr? These guys invented MS Paint!