Re: Something to read over lunch: Eclipse IDEin thebrowser

Yes, I know that you can specify a Java version. But some of our customer's still had Java 1.1 or some semi-pre-historic version of Microsoft Java. So there were a lot of calls for support.

You are right... thick clients are nice because they give you more control, but updating all that stuff (and ensuring that users will update it) is a pain. Webstart is a nice solution to that problem.

What persuaded you to distribute a big exe file instead of using webstart?

-----Original Message-----
From: wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2008 2:16 PM
To: Websphere Development Studio Client for iSeries
Subject: Re: [WDSCI-L] Something to read over lunch: Eclipse IDEin thebrowser

Luis Colorado skrev den 05-02-2008 18:52:

I tried webstart, and I liked it. Our main problem was that some users had dated versions of Java, so it didn't work correctly. However, we are trying to move away from thick-clients, even if they are as convenient as webstart. This days it seems like web apps can pretty much do anything via AJAX.

You can enforce a specific Java version in the specification file (JNLP?
JPNL? JLNP?). Hopefully that will resolve this "please update your
java" thing.

I did a small Java application which was to be deployed to lots of
users. I ended up in using fat-jar to create a single JAR, and JSmooth
to create an EXE (which also knew to check and update to Java 6) which
could then be placed directly in the users startup folder. Worked quite
well for us.

Ajax can do a lot, but you have a lot more control over the environment
and power with a thick client.

All depends on what you need to do.