Java on the Mac

[xphile]

Apple says: "...Mac OS X provides a highly-optimized, tightly integrated implementation of Java 2 Standard Edition 1.3, including the client version of the HotSpot virtual machine..."

Ok. That's nice. Can someone please tell me why still, even under OS X, with I.E., or OmniWeb, or iCab, or Mozilla, or whatever, no website that requires Java even comes close to pretending to work?

I must be missing something, some switch somewhere that says, use OS X Java 2 SE 1.3, or something.

 

[jabulus]

... lol ... it's funny ... because I agree wholeheartedly. While java runs just fine for app purposes ... trying to get Java working in a browser is a completely differnet story. Quite disapointing, actually.

 

[endian]

It's not the Java, it's the browser plugin. The plugin architecture on OSX is Carbon based, and it's still buggy.

 

[jabulus]

Originally posted by endian
It's not the Java, it's the browser plugin. The plugin architecture on OSX is Carbon based, and it's still buggy.

Perhaps you can take this time and explain this to me? I know they always talk about "carbon" and "carbonized" and you just said "carbon based". What exactly does that mean? Is the architecture Carbon or something? You can run Carbon apps on 9.1 with the right software, right?

Can someone help clarify this for me? Thanks
Alex

 

[endian]

It just means that every browser plugin on OSX will be a Carbon 'app' and every OSX browser has to know how to load Carbon bundles. It only makes sense to do it this way, since there are more potential MacOS plugins to be ported than for NeXT.

You can run CFM (Code Fragment Manager) Carbon apps under 9.1 if you have CarbonLib installed (which it is by default.) It's also possible to compile a Carbon app as a Mach-O binary, which only OSX would be able to run. Mach-O binaries run faster on OSX than CFM, because Mach-O is OSX's native binary format.

 

[xphile]

Originally posted by endian
It's not the Java, it's the browser plugin. The plugin architecture on OSX is Carbon based, and it's still buggy.

"Buggy?" This is obviously some new meaning of the phrase "Buggy" I was previously unaquainted with. I'd said it basically just doesn't work.

Are all these browser maker adopting the plugin architecture, or will MS do it one way, Mozilla another, Opera yet another, and so on so that the hell I go through under OS 9 (finding a browser that comes close to working on a particular site) just continues under 10? Why is it so freaking hard to get a consistent visual experience from browsers?

Just my day to complain about something.