What Java Was Suppose To Be

Way back in 1995, Sun release a programing language and runtime environment with the intent to “Write Once, Run Anyware” essentially enabling programmers to allow their programs to be cross platform from the get go. Java has evolved over the years and has remained somewhat popular. It was a great idea but for some reason, I always felt like Java programs run slower then how they intended to be. In come Adobe with the Adobe Integrated Runtime or AIR. Adobe AIR is taking on Java with what feels like a lighter weight runtime environment. AIR is the culmination of Flash, Adobe Flex, HTML, and AJAX, all of which are new technologies that have been implemented since Java’s initial release. When the web was initially released, it needed to be something that would be somewhat lightweight dealing with simple text coding that a web browser would be able to translate into a web page. As Internet speeds increased, and web technologies advanced, multimedia moved to the forefront of web technologies. To create this, Javascript (no real relation to Java) was used to dynamically create portions of and even full webpages. Being that the browser is the runtime environment for Javascript instead of a separate download, Javascript allowed for much faster interface enhancements. With HTML and Javascript, the web began to change and grow. Again, speeds increased and a new technology is introduced by Macromedia, Shockwave. Shockwave was a multimedia player which was run through a plugin through your browser. Eventually Macromedia developed Macromedia Flash as an animation movie platform which it is still used today for. Adobe bought out Macromedia and continued to developed the Flash platform which eventually became a light weight multimedia platform. Youtube is using a flash video player and podcasters are using flash audio players on their websites. Application programmers found that programing for Flash a little challenging. Macromedia came to the rescue with Flex, a programing interface for Flash. Adobe continued to improve Flex when they got it from Macromedia. Technology advanced and an all new Markup language was developed for the web, XML or Extensible Markup Language. The flexibility of XML allowed Javascript to do amazing things on the same webpage. Enter AJAX, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. This allows interaction with a webpage without having to reload the page. Good examples of AJAX is Google Reader and Yahoo! Mail. Take, the latest and greates HTML, Flash, Flex, and AJAX and put it into a Runtime environment and you get Adobe AIR. With these advanced technologies, I think that Java may end up going to the wayside. AIR is light, fast, and uses existing web technologies to provide you with an app in an offline environment. Web pages and applications need to be light in order to succeed with cloud computing. AIR allows you to take these web technologies right to the desktop. Right now AIR is still in Beta but there are already programs that you can use with it. Check out Pownce and Snitter. These applications are really slick and light weight on your computer. Snitter minimizes to your system tray in Windows, which I really appreciate. I wish Pownce would do the same. Check out Adobe AIR and let me know what you think. AIR is what Java was suppose to be.

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~ by boxtech on February 13, 2008.