Sun Rewrites Java Browser Plugin

I’m not sure that Java applets are even relevant to software development today, but this interview (via “Ajaxian”:http://ajaxian.com/archives/ken-russell-on-the-new-java-plugin) regarding the “rewritten Java browser plugin”:http://ajaxian.com/archives/sun-has-rewritten-the-browser-java-plugin caught my attention:

Java Applets Reborn from Dion Almaer on Vimeo.

So the most interesting things (to me):

* The plugin itself is mostly written in Java. I love these sort of recursive language exercises (see “PyPy”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PyPy), if nothing else for their “turtles all the way down”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down effect. But I suppose this actually makes a certain degree of sense: if you have a fixed set of resources and you’re putting lots of them towards improving the JVM/JRE, you can take advantage of those improvements by writing your plugin in Java. They don’t talk about the architecture of the old plugin much, but I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to find out the native-code “shim” used to communicate between the browser and the JVM is easier to maintain than the old plugin was.
* Applets run in a completely independent process (not just thread).
* An applet can demand to run with a particular JRE version. They label this “enterprise support.” I’d call it “sanity support.”

None of this really speaks to whether it’s too little, too late. It seems like a good move on Sun’s part, especially given the recent attention on rich internet applications (RIAs) has focused (not necessarily undeservedly) on “Flash”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash, “Adobe AIR”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_AIR (the vapor-ware jokes write themselves, don’t they?) and “Microsoft Silverlight”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Silverlight. The amount of press and attention may indicate this is an area whose time has come. And while I admit having a begrudging soft spot for Java, it seems that companies (especially capital-”E” “enterprise” companies) who already have lots of in house Java expertise could benefit from being able to extend that knowledge down to the desktop. Maybe.