[Sigia-l] Java installation stats?

[Leslie Johnston]

At 06:17 PM 1/17/2005, Listera wrote:

>There's, however, another client-side technology that can work tightly
>coupled with Java backend, but with far greater penetration and the best
>record for on-the-fly upgrades, because of its small footprint: Flash.
>
>Except for handling large datasets, deeply-nested XML parsing and
>large-scale object (in-memory) management, Flash can handle client-side
>interactions better than Java and, needless to say, with better UX.

In our case, that's exactly what we doing.  It's an end-user Java 
application to build personal portfolios of educational objects that are 
not downloaded, but point to complex XML objects with related media files 
(including images and large electronic texts or datasets) managed by our 
Repository (we only want pointers to our Repo so we can enforce the 
appropriate access rights for licensed content).  Users search the 
Repository and can add objects to their collections from the web interface; 
the application builds collection files that are xml files 
themselves.  That's why our developers went with Java and Java Web 
Start.  We also take advantage of JWS to keep the application on the end 
user's machine updated with new versions.

Our developers did consider Flash, but they have much less expertise with 
it.  The time potentially needed to develop the expertise would have far 
exceeded the deadlines, and we had no resources to add new programming staff.

Actually, I think we did a pretty good job with the usability of the 
Collector Tool - the results of alpha version user tests led us to make 
fewer than a half-dozen changes to menu organization and labeling.  Now 
we're in larger beta testing with faculty and students, so we'll see.


>So I'd recommend checking out Flash-Java coupling.
>
>Ziya