Swing Applet Questions ....

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2 total messages Started by Art Pollard Mon, 04 Oct 2004 22:30

#844

Author: Art Pollard
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 22:30

34 lines
2570 bytes

I have a question.  I'm not much of a Java person (or barely at all
actually) but I am somewhat in charge of a Java project so I'm trying to get
my head around a lot of this.

We have an application which is word processor-like which we are building.
Our initial plan was to do it so that it could be run both as an applet and
as an end-user application so people could edit their documents over the web
(from within their browser).

However someone pointed out to me that there are so many restrictions with
applets that the application could not be built so that it would both work
and function well.  I'm not too concerned with the idea that the applet can
only talk to the server from which it was downloaded, that is fine.  Are
there any other restrictions I ought to know about?

Also, would there be a significant development time difference developing an
application so that it can be run as an applet and as an application v.s. as
an application only?

Finally, one of the reasons why we are developing this application is to
showcase some new text editing and layout technology which we have
developed.  On the surface, it looks like a standard text editor control
however, it is capable of advanced layout and would be suitable for building
a full fledged word processor (comparable to Word, WordPerfect, or
FrameMaker) or page layout software (such as QuarkXPress).  Do you think
there would be much market for this within the Java community? (We developed
it first in Java because we felt that we could complete it faster and thus
bring it to market sooner and it is what our primary developer -- a former
developer of WordPerfect's core -- preferred.)  Any pointers here would also
be appreciated.

Thanks,

-Art

Re: Swing Applet Questions ....

#845

Author: Tor Iver Wilhelmsen [TeamB]
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 07:02

34 lines
2100 bytes

"Art Pollard" <pollarda@lextek.com> writes:

> Are there any other restrictions I ought to know about?

Use of some classes (like java.awt.Robot) are restricted.

> 
> Also, would there be a significant development time difference developing an
> application so that it can be run as an applet and as an application v.s. as
> an application only?

No; an applet is basically a normal container, except with a couple of
differences when running inside a browser. These are related to two
things:

1) The applet lifecycle (init(), start(), stop(), destroy()). Proper
   handling may require the "run as application" main() to call at
   least init() and start().

2) The AppletContext, which may need to be replaced by an AppletStub
   and related AppletContext implementations.

You can differentiate between the "run modes" by setting a flag in
main().

> Do you think there would be much market for this within the Java
> community?

Possibly; but make it easy to write plugins (like JBuilder and Eclipse
do).

I seem to recall that Corel tried to make a Java-based office suite
once, but it failed; possibly it was ahead of its time, Java's AWT and
Swing have improved in efficiency and speed since then.

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