HotJava (later called HotJava Browser to distinguish it from HotJava Views) was a modular, extensible web browser from Sun Microsystems implemented in Java. It was the first browser to support Java applets, and was Sun's demonstration platform for the then new technology. It has since been discontinued and is now no longer supported. Furthermore, the Sun Download Center was taken down on July 31, 2011, and the download link on the official site points to a placeholder page saying so.
HotJava is a WWW browser developed by Sun Microsystems Inc., which has a built-in Java interpreter and is therefore capable of executing Java applets. An applet is a Java program that can be included in an HTML page using a special tag, just like an image is included using the IMG tag.
In 1994, a team of Java developers started writing WebRunner, which was a clone of the internet browser Mosaic. It was based on the Java programming language. The name WebRunner was a tribute to the Blade Runner movie.
WebRunner's first public demonstration was given by John Gage and James Gosling at the Technology Entertainment Design Conference in Monterey, California in 1995. Renamed HotJava, it was officially announced in May the same year at the SunWorld conference.
At the time of writing, HotJava is available for the following platforms:
- Unix: Sun Solaris 2.3, 2.4, 2.5 SPARC-based machines
- Windows: Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 95 only
Note that HotJava is not yet available for the Macintosh even though the Java interpreter is already available for Macintosh System 7.5
It is also worth noting that at the time of writing, the available version of HotJava is Version 1.0 alpha 3. The main goal of Sun Microsystems at the inception of the HotJava project was to come up with a product that could be used to demonstrate the concept of executable content on a WWW page.
As the Java Developers Kit (comprising Java Compiler, Java Interpreter, Java Applet Viewer, Java Debugger API) was subsequently developed through the alpha and beta releases to the final release of JDK Version 1.0 on 23 January 1996, HotJava was not developed in parallel.
Consequently, HotJava 1.0 alpha 3 can only execute applets developed using the earliest version (alpha) of the Java Developers Kit (JDK). It will not execute applets developed using the beta or recently released full version (1.0) of the JDK. HotJava 1.0 alpha 3 is therefore rather of limited use.
Other WWW browser developers have either already incorporated the Java technology into their product or will be doing so in due course.
Netscape's Navigator and Spyglass' Mosaic account for almost 95% of web browsers used on the Internet today. Both companies have already licensed the Java technology. Netscape Navigator 2.0 already fully incorporates the capability of executing Java applets developed using the beta as well as the version 1.0 full releases of the JDK. Netscape Navigator 2.0 therefore complements HotJava 1.0 alpha 3.
Spyglass intends to fully integrate the Java technology into its next release of Mosaic.
It is also worth noting that at the time of writing, the available version of HotJava is Version 1.0 alpha 3. The main goal of Sun Microsystems at the inception of the HotJava project was to come up with a product that could be used to demonstrate the concept of executable content on a WWW page.
As the Java Developers Kit (comprising Java Compiler, Java Interpreter, Java Applet Viewer, Java Debugger API) was subsequently developed through the alpha and beta releases to the final release of JDK Version 1.0 on 23 January 1996, HotJava was not developed in parallel.
Consequently, HotJava 1.0 alpha 3 can only execute applets developed using the earliest version (alpha) of the Java Developers Kit (JDK). It will not execute applets developed using the beta or recently released full version (1.0) of the JDK. HotJava 1.0 alpha 3 is therefore rather of limited use.
Other WWW browser developers have either already incorporated the Java technology into their product or will be doing so in due course.
Netscape's Navigator and Spyglass' Mosaic account for almost 95% of web browsers used on the Internet today. Both companies have already licensed the Java technology. Netscape Navigator 2.0 already fully incorporates the capability of executing Java applets developed using the beta as well as the version 1.0 full releases of the JDK. Netscape Navigator 2.0 therefore complements HotJava 1.0 alpha 3.
Spyglass intends to fully integrate the Java technology into its next release of Mosaic.
HotJava had somewhat limited functionality compared to other browsers of its time.
More critically, HotJava suffered from the performance limitations of Java virtual machine implementations of the day (both in speed and in memory consumption) and was consequently quite slow
sumber :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotJava
http://www.euroyellowpages.com/exhibitn/javhwhat.html
