Ruby Web Start?

Ruby
1

Hi,

I’ve been poking my nose into some Java books over the last week. Java
Web Start applications seem like the coolest thing. From what I
understand when you click an app link on a web page you automatically
download not just the java app but also java if you don’t have the
correct version installed. Then the application runs locally on your
computer. This sounds like it could be much better then a database
admin website and having to download admin web pages and images and css
and javascript files over and over. Even compared to AJAX, a dedicated
desktop app that can talk to the remote database would be faster. And
with Java Web Start when the java app is updated on the original
website, the next time you run the app it is automatically updated.

Does Ruby Web Start exist or is it being developed?

This sounds like the future to me.

Peter

2

DÅ?a Sobota 18 Február 2006 04:38 [email protected] napísal:

I’ve been poking my nose into some Java books over the last week. Java
Web Start applications seem like the coolest thing.

I don’t recall seeing a single Java Web Start application that’s not a
demo in
the wild. I’ll admit, I didn’t really look, or really care. The desktop
Java
market is miniscule, the only apps I can recall of having a major
following
are Eclipse (and other Java IDEs), jEdit, Azureus. None of those
deployed
using JNLP.

People don’t want Yet Another Package Manager. I want my programs
installed
and kept up-to-date via RPM, APT, Portage, whatever is the standard on
the
system I’m using (unfortunately, a similar system for Windows didn’t
come to
mind), not something else I have to keep track of.

If Sun wanted Java apps to be easily deployable, they’d provide a
wrapper to
turn JARs into proper executables with the JDK. JNLP is nonsense. It has
marginal usefulness in deploying applications internally, but that’s
easily
doable with remote administration without anyone clicking on links.

Microsoft aims to Do Stuff with its .NET clone of JNLP, and given their
option
to force anything down the throats of users with a new Windows version
which
Sun didn’t have, it might actually end up being used.

This sounds like it could be much better then a database admin website and
having to download admin web pages and images and css and javascript files
over and over.

Ever heard of browser caching?

Does Ruby Web Start exist or is it being developed?

I doubt it. We have gems. Set your browser to do a “gem install” when
you
click on a link to a gem file, sounds pretty much the same to me.

This sounds like the future to me.

It sounds like a relic from when Scott McNealy thought people will give
up PCs
and only use thin clients with everything stored server-side to me. Or
that
someone might actually use desktop Java apps - which, ironically,
finally
start to look and feel much less repulsively now (half-hearted yay for
native
controls in Swing 1.6) that no one gives a damn.

David V.

3

On 2/18/06, David V. [email protected] wrote:

the wild. I’ll admit, I didn’t really look, or really care. The desktop
to
option

over and over.
This sounds like the future to me.

David V.

I have actually noticed a Renaissance in Java desktop apps. For the
longest
time, I didn’t expect Java on the desktop to be much of a force, but I
have
to tell you, things are starting to change.

I don’t think you gave proper perspective to the apps you mentioned:

Eclipse is used to hundreds of thousands of developers, so that isn’t a
minuscule application.

Azeurus had a million downloads in a single day when the latest version
was
released… another massively popular application.

I have also started using RSSOwl which is just a really nice RSS
feedreader.

An application that I use that is deployed via Java Web Start is called
ArgoUML which is a UML modelling program. Every time I start it, I have
the
latest release.

The .Net equivalent is called ClickOnce. We’ll see how it turns out. I
have no doubt that people will use it, not because they’re forced, but
because Microsoft does have a way of making development of stuff like
that
pretty easy. I have a server diagnostic tool that I wrote for ClickOnce
and
whenever I add a new diagnostic to it, I can be sure that the next time
I
run it on one of my (geographically distributed) servers, it’ll have all
of
the latest tests.

Rob