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The future of Java standalone applications
At 8:12 AM on Sep 7, 2006, rba1988 wrote:
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I was just wondering what you people think of the future of Java standalone/desktop applications. What're your opinions on this? Do you think people will continue developing pure Java applications that you won't find on web pages but on the desktop. Or do you think that Java programming are really meant for applet development and not for application development?
Personally, I think that Java applications should be taken into great consideration because of 1) its cross-platform capabilities (distribute your software to any kind of machine! share the love babeh. hehe) and 2) java for me is the perfect language for network based applications (not applets mind you but applicatioons like a program that admisters network traffic (complete with all the tools similar to UNIX: ssh, traceroute, ping, who, tcpdump)) and other possible stuff Java can create.
In terms of performance, have you guys tried Java on Mac? Double-clicking user-friendly! And it runs like a native program on OS X.4! Well not entirely similar to a native program, but it is relatively fast compared to a java application let's say, 4 years ago? hehe. Also, with the speed of technology today, they'll probably create a JVM can make a program run as fast as a native program.
And the GUI development. Compared to other GUI APIs, Java has the best, easiest GUI development.
These are just my thoughts. I'm really putting a lot of faith into the development of Java standalone applications.
What do you guys think?
144 replies so far (
Post your own)
Re: The future of Java standalone applications
I think that Java is great for the desktop (although prior to 1.5, I wasn't always convinced). I personally use Java quite a lot for desktop apps. I think in the enterprise domain, Java desktop has had more success, whereas it's still difficult to find Java apps appearing in the typical list of apps that the average home user uses.Platforms have to appeal to two audiences: 1) developers 2) end-users. As always, there's a bit of a chicken/egg situation here. Still, it looks like the Swing team are doing quite a lot to ensure the end-user experience is refined, and there are a number of improvements for developers to take advantage of (SwingWorker comes to mind; sortable tables is also one less hurdle for devs).
If Sun would just divert a chunk of their marketing budget to paying Romain to knock up some excellent everyday apps (email, IM, media player, etc, etc) then that would do wonders, methinks!
Re: The future of Java standalone applications
Having just released a Swing-based standalone application last year, I think that Java on the desktop is still a very viable area for the Java Platform. And Java 5.0 (and even 1.4) really made some big strides in making GUI development worthwhile.I've worked with Swing development since the 1.2 days, and current development and performance with Swing is way better than it used to be.
Sadly, most of the focus for Sun appears to be in the Enterprise arena. I realize there's a big push with web-based applications, but the desktop side isn't going away anytime soon. And there's always areas where web-based solutions will not work.
I think Sun is missing a good opportunity to really push the desktop development side of things now.
Re: The future of Java standalone applications
> Sadly, most of the focus for Sun appears to be in the> Enterprise arena. I realize there's a big push with
> web-based applications, but the desktop side isn't
> going away anytime soon. And there's always areas
> where web-based solutions will not work.
>
> I think Sun is missing a good opportunity to really
> push the desktop development side of things now.
What makes you think this? 1.6 has a ton of desktop enhancements. Baseline support, The group layout manager, Mattise in Netbeans, No more gray rect, Task Tray Icons, Improved fonts, vastly improved look and feel on XP, etc... Lets not forget swinglabs.
There has never been a better time to be a Java desktop developer.
Re: The future of Java standalone applications
Java extremely lacks rich GUI and media features. WPF and Adobe Apollo will provide eye candy killing desktop RIA tools.Java can only fight them if it embrace embeddable RIA technology that Adobe Flex is. Say it's possible to embed it into Eclipse RCP and add some Ruby-coding enabled gasoline to write it in rapid manner... then yes, Java is still interesting on Win and Mac.
Otherwise it's half an interesting even for *nix desktops. No really. it's 2007 coming soon. We live in RIA era. And desktops should be rich as well.
Re: The future of Java standalone applications
> There has never been a better time to be a Java> desktop developer.
And it's just going to get better and better.
Why?
The JVM and JRE continues to improve.
Machines continue to get more and more powerful.
The tool suite for Java is just simply outstanding, with zero entry cost, and they continue get better.
OSS Java will bring the JVM by default to all of the Linux et al distros. They can do that now, but only with that recent license change. Now that the JDK will be OSS, that's just going to increase adoption.
Top tier vendor support. The only vendor not supporting Java pretty much is Microsoft. With OSS Java, we should be getting support from Red Hat et al in terms of making Java run very well on Red Hat/Fedora right off the CD, including (ideally) good Java 2D support.
Not to mention that the platform is just insanely capable, from all of the Swing gizmos to embdedded databases plus connectivity to Everything.
If they can get Java 3D to be a more first class citizen and to work reliably across Windows/Mac/Linux, I think that would be a great asset to the desktop platform.
The future is bright I think.
Re: The future of Java standalone applications
Two Swing areas Sun is definitely NOT taking seriously.- The Help system. (JavaHelp is pitiful).
- Installers (I doubt even they use WebStart).
Gonzalo Díaz
Re: The future of Java standalone applications
> What makes you think this? 1.6 has a ton of desktop> enhancements. Baseline support, The group layout
> manager, Mattise in Netbeans, No more gray rect, Task
> Tray Icons, Improved fonts, vastly improved look and
> feel on XP, etc... Lets not forget swinglabs.
The devil's in the detail, and the above changes, whilst relatively small in the grand scheme of things, are huge assets to the desktop experience. I quite like the new Desktop class, and I think any of the ideas from SwingLab's JDIC will be extremely welcome also.
Re: The future of Java standalone applications
> Java extremely lacks rich GUI and media features. WPF> and Adobe Apollo will provide eye candy killing
> desktop RIA tools.
>
> Java can only fight them if it embrace embeddable RIA
> technology that Adobe Flex is. Say it's possible to
> embed it into Eclipse RCP and add some Ruby-coding
> enabled gasoline to write it in rapid manner... then
> yes, Java is still interesting on Win and Mac.
>
> Otherwise it's half an interesting even for *nix
> desktops. No really. it's 2007 coming soon. We live
> in RIA era. And desktops should be rich as well.
Alas Swing is going to be left in the dust in the next couple of years. It does look like microsoft is actaully delivering WPF, and it leaves all other GUI toolkits in the dust. I haven't seen Apollo to comment on it. I don't think sun has the resources let alone the will to build something that can compete with WPF. I'm not a microsoft fanboy, i've done swing for the last 5 years and have loved it. Check out the demos section on the link below.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/reference/presentation/
Re: The future of Java standalone applications
Apollo is cross-platform desktop technology mix that allows you use Flex/xHTML/Ajax/PDF on desktop, use filesystem, DBs, networking and so forth. It looks even more impressive than WPF. WPF has 3D but stuck to one platform (WPF/E for all platforms lacks the whole set of cools features).Check it out:
labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo
I don't think open sourcing Java will help Java platform to archive such impressive results and rich features. Such a pity.
Re: The future of Java standalone applications
Yea, I can just see the day when the poor schmuck of a Swing programmer is just curling up in to a fetal ball of the floor when management sends down requirements for an interface akin to full motion video is required for the new accounting invoicing system.Oh, wait, that will never happen.
I've seen more back office apps devolve back in to green screen interfaces than anything ever requiring a "lickable" interface.
That stuff makes great demos, but nobody pays for that stuff when writing internal applications. Hell, I bet the back office apps at Apple mostly look generic and industrial.
Java 2D and Java 3D/JOGL are the foundations for getting this icon flying fading and morphing gizmology -- exposing the hardware of the graphics subsystem to Java. Once given that access, you can do most anything you want. You can pretty much get that access today. Currently most of that effort is spent on games.
Sun needs to make it more consistent and cross platform to get that kind of access -- not an easy task, particularly on Linux, and Apple is in charge of their own VM. That leaves Windows, where a lot of this stuff already works, and works pretty well. There's just no glaring high level tool kit for it yet.
Re: The future of Java standalone applications
Will,It's never gonna happen. BUT! There's a new epoch of "webified" rich desktop apps. And Java do not fit this rich model at this time. Java will have a tough time attracting newcomers because of this.
That's what I mean.
Re: The future of Java standalone applications
> - Installers (I doubt even they use WebStart).Do you mind expanding on this a little?
Dmitri
Re: The future of Java standalone applications
> Yea, I can just see the day when the poor schmuck of> a Swing programmer is just curling up in to a fetal
> ball of the floor when management sends down
> requirements for an interface akin to full motion
> video is required for the new accounting invoicing
> system.
>
> Oh, wait, that will never happen.
>
> I've seen more back office apps devolve back in to
> green screen interfaces than anything ever requiring
> a "lickable" interface.
>
> That stuff makes great demos, but nobody pays for
> that stuff when writing internal applications. Hell,
> I bet the back office apps at Apple mostly look
> generic and industrial.
>
> Java 2D and Java 3D/JOGL are the foundations for
> getting this icon flying fading and morphing
> gizmology -- exposing the hardware of the graphics
> subsystem to Java. Once given that access, you can do
> most anything you want. You can pretty much get that
> access today. Currently most of that effort is spent
> on games.
>
> Sun needs to make it more consistent and cross
> platform to get that kind of access -- not an easy
> task, particularly on Linux, and Apple is in charge
> of their own VM. That leaves Windows, where a lot of
> this stuff already works, and works pretty well.
> There's just no glaring high level tool kit for it
> yet.
What if you not only get all the "lickable" capabilites of the GUI toolkit, but it's also easier and cheaper then using swing? These toolkits really target the browser as their competition anyway, it's just that they also marginalize swing at the same time. RIA's are really going to take off!
The future needs MVM
We need to not have to start a JVM by apps, it's a big waste.But otherwise Java on the desktop is great. JWS is to me a much better solution than WEB 2-3-4-5-...