Unless it can be integrated directly into the browser’s runtime rather than just another clueless plugin (Flash, Java, Quicktime, Windows Media, ad nauseum), I don’t think that many people will want a part of it.

I mean, I only envy Flash because of the video and vector animation playback that it offers; Wikipedia would be able to use it for those reasons, too, if it wasn’t for the extra-proprietary locks on Flash.

So of course, the only option open to them is Cortado, a Theora-playing Java applet by Flumotion, which has issues of its own. Yet, this is only because Sun has consistently ignored its once-heavily-touted Java Media Framework, and has never (until only recently, post-McNealy) given an iota of a thought as to how they would improve their desktop offerings.

And yet now, it wants to get back into the “rich out-browser web application” ego championships against Microsoft and Adobe, complete with their own army of stereotypically thin-skinned, overly-defensive sheeple developers and blogevangelists?

Why can’t it clean its own house first, like shaping up – no, REFORMING – how Java applets historically take forever to render within any given browser for any given purpose?

Unless, of course, they’ve left the applet in the dustbins of computing history’s flaming failures and switched completely to the slightly-less-troublesome Java Web Start?

I wouldn’t be surprised.

I have no idea what you talking about / smoking but if it works for you it works for me. =p

If you are referring to JavaFX, it is an AJAX killer. If you are referring to the scalability of flash and are saying it isn’t – I agree totally.

JavaFX has been around as fe3 for a while and is built on java. more importantly it is an abstraction of java, making rapid development of robust applications a reality. The topic of this post exists in a gap(hybrid), behind us is AJAX, ahead of us is JavaFX.

Is there a Flash/Flex implementation available ? ;-)

Hardly…..Forgetting about the natural scaling factors involved in a single vs. distributed set of flash pieces – it’s not nearly as scalable from a dev perspective.

Tell me really do you believe you’ll find the same number of developers able to “hack” in swing / flash as can be done in html? No – you can’t. The abstraction is too close to the real thing for that….Very powerful when you need it I’m sure but not quite an “ajax” killer.

And yeah, the trusted applet warnings are annoying