25 May 2002

Sat, 25 May 2002

16 priests in scandal have committed suicide

Study: 16 priests in scandal have committed suicide - USA Today 05-25-2002
16 Priests Commit Suicide Since 1986  - Guardian, UK
Study: 16 priests in abuse cases have committed suicide  - USA Today [Google US News]

Posted at: 19:22 | permalink

Java Swing can do HTML display & reasons why Swing apps haven't proliferated

Rebelutionary says:



Swing or DOM - should DHTML replace Swing?



It's easy to embed applets in web pages, but it's almost impossible to show web pages in a Java application.


Ay, there's the rub. Many times could I have built cool Java applications (like a Java rich client version of Radio based on JXTA) but the lack of a Swing HTML display pane has stopped that. Pity. [rebelutionary]


No, displaying HTML in a java application is not impossible. There's at least one way in the JDK: JEditorPane. I use this here in Swingin' Google! Now, I'll be the first person to tell you that displaying HTML in JEditorPane sucks. Sun has done a horrible job keeping this component up to date with the latest web standards. But, as you can see from the screenshots, it's not impossible. In fact, it's surprisingly little code. If Sun really wants to compete with M$, they need to fix horribly broken crap like this. I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen. And I have yet to see an open source alternative. There are commercial alternatives but who has the money?


Rebelutionary also says:



In my opinion no, Java GUIs are not dead at all - if anything they're steadily growing and improving (see IDEA for one example of a very fast, Swing based, cross platform application).


It's definitely possible to produce usable softare with Swing. My favorite example is limewire. However, it's very difficult to do it right, both in terms of the external user experience design, and the internal code design. In my mind, this is one of the primary reasons that Swing apps have not proliferated. Underlying that, I believe, is a Sun culture that makes UI work a second class citizen to the highbrow kernel stuff.


Swing suffers from the same problem that VB suffered from for a long time (still?) in that there isn't an easy way to produce a shell application that looks and feels like what most people expect from a Windows app. Thus, you wind up with people writing a lot of GUI that looks like it was designed by a crazed fortran programmer.


The problem with internal code design is that I've seen a lot of people come out of the Microsoft world, namely VB or MFC, where placement of GUI objects within a container is typically static. Exceptions would be something like NSViews from Nanosoft. I don't even know if that's around anymore. Regardless, I've seen a lot of GUI code written by Swing novices in which placement of all the objects in the GUI is static as opposed to being done dynamically with layout management, which IMHO, defeats the purpose of Swing. This leads to two other conclusions. First, typical GUI programmers have real problems learning layout management in Swing. I should know, I taught a group last year consisting of mostly VB programmers that struggled tremendously to think of all of those objects in terms of containership and hierarchy. That's a huge leap for some people. Second, the Java IDEs have only recently begun to improve to the point where the resource editors there can produce marginally useful layout management code. Netbeans ability to allow you to layout in static mode and then switch to grid bag layout and have it do all of the code generation is probably the best example that I've seen.

Posted at: 06:55 | permalink

Charles Miller blogs Bruce Schneier on Microsoft's liability

There's no reason to treat software any differently from other products. Today Firestone can produce a tire with a single systemic flaw and they're liable, but Microsoft can produce an operating system with multiple systemic flaws discovered per week and not be liable. This makes no sense, and it's the primary reason security is so bad today. [Bruce Schneier's April Crypto-Gram] [Charles Miller]

Posted at: 06:29 | permalink