June 1998 Java News

Tuesday, June 30, 1998

Sun's released Personal WebAccess 2.0, a web browser for the Personal Java platform. Sun licenses Personal WebAccess to companies shipping Personal Java devices. It is not available for individual download or purchase.

New Atlanta Communications has released ServletExec 1.1.2 for Microsoft IIS, Netscape FastTrack and Enterprise servers, and Mac OS web servers. This maintenance release fixes assorted bugs.

Monday, June 29, 1998

Microsoft has released version 2.0.2 of their SDK for Java and the first pre-release of version 3.0 of their SDK for Java.

Saturday, June 27, 1998

Sun's posted the third early access release of the Java Communications API for Solaris and Windows on the Java Developer Connection. This API allows Java applications to talk to the serial and parallel ports. This release fixes assorted bugs.

I've updated the notes for Week 6, Components, of my Intro to Java Programming course. In particular I added several pages covering the methods of the java.awt.Component class and a page about the difference between Swing and peer-based components.

Friday, June 26, 1998

I've updated the notes for Week 7, Events, of my Intro to Java Programming course. In particular I rewrote the pages on mouse and keyboard events.

Thursday, June 25, 1998

MacInTouch is reporting that Symantec is stopping development of Visual Cafe for the Macintosh. If so, this leaves Metrowerks with a virtual monopoly on Macintosh IDEs.

Wednesday, June 24, 1998

IBM's alphaworks has released XML for Java 1.0 with a free commercial license.

Tuesday, June 23, 1998

The U.S. National Security Agency has declassified the Key Exchange Algorithm and the SKIPJACK encryption algorithm used in the FORTEZZA personal computer card.

Monday, June 22, 1998

Sun's posted Version x3.00.050 of the Symantec JIT for JDK 1.1.6, Early Access 2 for Windows 95/NT on the Java Developer Connection. This release fixes a lot of nasty bugs.

Saturday, June 20, 1998

IBM's alphaworks has updated their IRC Client for Java.

IBM's alphaworks has updated the Jikes Java compiler for AIX, OS/2, Windows 95, Windows NT, Solaris Sparc.

Friday, June 19, 1998

IBM's alphaworks has released several new and updated products this week.

The Remote AWT for Java can now run in Daemon mode on an NC client.

Jikes Applet Dashboard works with Internet Explorer.

XML for Java now has XPointer support and assorted bug fixes.

CViz is a statistical visualization tool for analyzing high-dimensional data in large, complex data sets written in Java.

NetScript is an environment for scripting with network components in a Basic like language. Netscript components can be Java beans or ordinary Java classes packaged in JAR files. The NetScript run time is written in Java 1.1.

Thursday, June 18, 1998

I stopped by PC Expo in New York yesterday and overall it was quite boring. There was only a little Java from the expected suspects (Symantec, Inprise). Sun and Apple were both conspicuous by their absence.

I did note that for the first time in several years most companies on the main show floor managed to resist the urge to label every program, printer, mouse, scanner, hard drive and other gizmo as "Internet ready" or "Java compatible". There was a separate WebX hall that was almost empty of attendees. Finally, the Internet appears to be fading into the background of the computing infrastructure rather than being the "hot new thing."

Netscape only announced Communicator 4.5 yesterday. Actual beta software isn't expected until some time in July.

I've updated the notes for Week 5, Applets, of my Intro to Java Programming course.

Wednesday, June 17, 1998

Netscape is expected to release a beta of Navigator 4.5 today.

Sun's posted the first proposal for version 1.1 of the JavaMail API Specification. Public review closes on July 15.

For everyone who didn't get to linus.microsoft.com in time, here's the first few incriminating lines of what you missed:

% telnet linus.microsoft.com 80
Trying 131.107.74.11...
Connected to linus.microsoft.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 14:37:21 GMT
Server: Apache/1.2.6 Red Hat
Last-Modified: Thu, 07 May 1998 18:17:09 GMT
ETag: "17d6-792-3551faa5"
Content-Length: 1938
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html

Here's a screenshot if you prefer.

Tuesday, June 16, 1998

Microsoft has taken down linus.microsoft.com, probably out of embarssament after too many people noticed it.

Monday, June 15, 1998

I'm looking for a program to draw flow charts, class hierarchy diagrams, and similar things on Windows NT. On the Mac I use Stencil It and ClarisWorks. I'd appreciate any suggestions you might have for Windows programs with similar functionality. Freeware or payware is fine. (Most Windows shareware seems to be so annoyingly in my face that I delete it almost instantaneously. )

For a laugh, surf over to http://linus.microsoft.com/ while it lasts.

Friday, June 12, 1998

NetBeans, has released a public beta of NetBeans Developer 2.0, a pure Java IDE based on Swing.

Thursday, June 11, 1998

Microsoft's released the first pre-beta of Internet Explorer 5.0 for Windows 95 and NT. Among other features, this release features more support for DHTML, CSS, and XML. No word yet on any changes in Java support. The web site appears incompatible with Netscape. (Now why does that not surprise me?)

Wednesday, June 10, 1998

Sun's prepared an Internet Draft for a Schema for Representing Java Objects in an LDAP Directory.

Sun's released version 1.3 of the Java Shared Data Toolkit to registered members of the Java Developer Connection. This release features speed-ups, bug fixes, and various API changes.

Borland's updated the JBuilder 2 online documentation to cover the JDK 1.1.6.

Tuesday, June 9, 1998

Sun's posted the JDBC 2.0 implementation and specification.

Monday, June 8, 1998

Sun's released version 2.0.1 of its compatibility tester JavaCheck. It's not clear what the difference is between version 2.0 and 2.0.1. Presumably this is a minor bug fix release, perhaps to add some missing files.

Friday, June 5, 1998

Apple's released the fourth early access release of the Macintosh Runtime for Java Software Development Kit (MRJ SDK) 2.0.1. MRJ SDK supplies a compiler and various other development tools omitted from MRJ. This version updates various tools and libraries, including JBindery which has a simplified user interface.

Thursday, June 4, 1998

I've launched a sister site called Cafe con Leche which tracks news from the XML world.If you're into XML, and you enjoy Cafe au Lait, you should find Cafe con Leche useful too.

Microsoft's released version 1.0 of the Java SDK for Windows CE. Separately, Alan Baratz, president of Sun's Java Software Division, told attendees at GigaWorld IT Forum 98 that "The Java technology is not an operating system" and that Java apps are likely to run on top of Windows CE, at least initially.

Wednesday, June 3, 1998

IBM's alphaworks has updated Speech for Java to the Java Speech API 0.7 beta specification.

Alphaworks has also released several new products including:

• Skij, a Scheme interpreter, written in Java, with extensions for constructing and working with Java objects. Skij can be thought of as a scripting language for Java.

• JAX, a Java application packaging tool that reduces the size of a Java application by removing code that isn't used by the application. IBM claims 30%-50% reduction of executable size.

• Jikes Applet Dashboard is an applet-debugging tool Windows 95/NT that shows how your applets will work in various web browsers.

• a distributed version of InfoBus for Windows 95 and NT that allows InfoBus components to communicate across different virtual machines and network hosts. Distributed InfoBus is a virtual machine bridge, as provided for in the InfoBus 1.1 specification. It supports multiple network protocols, such as HTTP and IIOP.

Tuesday, June 2, 1998

Apple has released an update to Macintosh Runtime for Java 2.1 early access 1 that enables debugging with Metrowerks CodeWarrior Pro 3.

Greg Guerin's released version 1.1 of his free Fancy-API2Mac tool. Fancy-API2Mac converts HTML produced by the standard javadoc program into a set of documents nested into sub-folders, rather than a set of files with very long, and MacOS-hostile file names. This release fixes assorted bugs and works with PolarDoc's 8.3-type output file-names.

Monday, June 1, 1998

Sun is soliciting feedback about the design, performance, and usefulness of the java.sun.com web site. I suggested they use fewer graphics and applets, make it easier to find specific APIs and products, and use direct ftp downloads without going through download2.cgi first. One section of the form asks for other web sites you visit frequently, so be sure to tell them about Cafe au Lait.

Bill la Forge has posted a new release of Coins, his XML based Java serialization system. This release fixes various bugs, moves SimpleRepository into the coins package, and allows the cwd repository to work with file-based repositories.