Re: No Java in IE5?

Jeff Bone (jbone@activerse.com)
Wed, 22 Apr 1998 17:47:16 -0500


Brief thought. Netscape's recent decision not to continue development
of their own VM and Microsoft's decision not to include a VM by default
in their browser are *good things* in the long haul for the Java
community. As a Java developer, I can say pretty much without
qualification that the state of Java today (from a cross-platform
perspective) is worse, not better than, native code development in at
least one respect. With native code development, you only have to
qualify your code on the various OSes you ship on. With Java, you have
to qualify on each Java VM a platform supports X the platforms you are
supporting. Each VM has its own quirks and foibles, and this
complicates the QA process tremendously.

Having the browser vendors pull back opens things up for a third-party,
standard VM to "win" in the market and become, through user demand, the
de facto VM that people will put in their browser, which would be a good
thing IMO. The situation would be improved if Microsoft not only didn't
ship a VM, but refused to continue developing one.

Getting the VM in their is another situation entirely... :-/

jb