123 lines
5.6 KiB
HTML
123 lines
5.6 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">
|
|
<html> <head>
|
|
<title>HotJava for Linux</title>
|
|
</head>
|
|
|
|
<body BGCOLOR="#ffefd5" TEXT="#181871">
|
|
|
|
<H4><IMG ALIGN=MIDDLE SRC="./gx/bat-l.gif">
|
|
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little less scary!</I>
|
|
"<IMG ALIGN=MIDDLE SRC="./gx/bat-r.gif"> </H4>
|
|
|
|
<P> <HR> <P>
|
|
<!--===================================================================-->
|
|
<center><h1>Running Sun's Hotjava Browser on a Linux System</h1></center>
|
|
<hr>
|
|
|
|
<center><h4><a href="mailto: layers@vax2.rain.gen.mo.us">by Larry
|
|
Ayers</a></h4></center>
|
|
|
|
<center>Copyright (c) 1996</center><BR>
|
|
|
|
<center><H5>Published in Issue 11 of the Linux Gazette</H5></center>
|
|
<center><h3>Introduction</h3></center>
|
|
|
|
<P> <hr>
|
|
<p>Recently I stopped by the
|
|
<a href="http://www.blackdown.org/java-linux/Information.html">Java-Linux</a>
|
|
web-page to see what was new and found an intriguing new link. This link
|
|
took me to a page which contains a script allowing Sun Microsystem's HotJava
|
|
web-browser to be run on a Linux machine. I was skeptical, as the Java-based
|
|
browser supposedly is only available in versions for Win 95/NT and Sparc
|
|
Solaris systems. The comments in the script stated that the Sparc version
|
|
should be downloaded and installed, after which the new script should be
|
|
edited to reflect the location of the Java Developers Kit on the machine.
|
|
The comments were rather terse; what I wanted to know was whether it worked
|
|
well enough to even bother with.
|
|
|
|
|
|
<center><h3>Download and Installation</h3></center>
|
|
|
|
<p>You've probably guessed that my curiosity got the better of me; feeling
|
|
faintly foolish I FTP'ed the three-and-one-half megabytes of Sparc binaries
|
|
from the <a href="ftp://ftp.javasoft.com/pub/">Javasoft site</a> and installed
|
|
them. After substituting the new start-up shell script for the supplied
|
|
script I was ready to try it out. The first try it died, complaining that it
|
|
couldn't find <b>mkdir</b> in /usr/bin. I re-edited the shell script and
|
|
corrected that path. This time it worked, and I have to say I was impressed.
|
|
|
|
<center><h3>So What's It Like?</h3></center>
|
|
|
|
<p>HotJava is a graphically well-designed browser. The graphics in the
|
|
various help-pages, the buttons, and the general design are all professionally
|
|
executed, and pleasing to the eye. Here is a screen-shot of one of the
|
|
included monitor applets:<br>
|
|
|
|
<HR>
|
|
<img src="./gx/ayers/splash.jpg" alt="HotJava" align=center>
|
|
<HR>
|
|
<p>The browser takes about as long to start up as Netscape does. It's
|
|
informative to start it from an xterm window, as verbose messages scroll by
|
|
throughout the session indicating what threads and applets are active.
|
|
You'll also be able to see its dying words, as (at least on my machine) it
|
|
will only run for about one-half an hour before crashing. While it runs it
|
|
seems to do well, though. I aimed it at http://www.gamelan.com and tried a
|
|
variety of java applets. They seemed to take longer to load than with
|
|
Netscape, but once loaded worked well. Frames, once a Netscape exclusive,
|
|
are supported. There is also a menu option allowing hotlists from other
|
|
browsers to be imported.
|
|
|
|
<p>In its current "pre-beta" state HotJava uses an awful lot of
|
|
memory. <b>Top</b> reported usage of fourteen to fifteen megabytes! No wonder
|
|
I could only start it when the machine was lightly loaded. The current version
|
|
of the Linux java compiler is a memory hog as well, so perhaps this is a trait
|
|
of java, being an interpreted language as it is.
|
|
|
|
<p>HotJava includes two interesting monitor applets. One shows the current
|
|
memory usage in bar-graph form, with a button which will clear past images and
|
|
pages from memory, rather like Netscape's "clear memory cache" function. The
|
|
other shows a list of all of the active threads, with often as many as twenty
|
|
to thirty active at once.
|
|
|
|
<p>I did notice that if used locally; i.e. for viewing HTML files on the local
|
|
hard disk rather than on the net, it wouldn't crash. GIF and JPEG images
|
|
referred to from a page (rather than inline on the page) are viewed in the
|
|
same window with an internal viewer. This is in contrast to some browsers
|
|
which call an external program for this purpose.
|
|
|
|
<p>I should state here that I don't have the Java Developer's Kit version 1.02
|
|
patchlevel 2 installed; my installation is the plain 1.02. Patchlevel 2 is
|
|
recommended on the Java-Linux page. Perhaps some of the problems I had with
|
|
HotJava can be attributed to my slightly out-of-date JDK.
|
|
|
|
<CENTER><H3>Conclusion</H3></CENTER>
|
|
|
|
Even with all of the faults related above my overall impression was
|
|
positive. Remember, this is a <b>pre-beta</b> release. HotJava is a major
|
|
evolutionary step up from the web-page applets which are the most common
|
|
uses of java these days. What other large application written in java is
|
|
available? It is a tribute to the inherent cross-platform nature of the
|
|
java language that a release intended for Sparc Solaris machines will run at
|
|
all on my humble 486 Linux box. Thanks go to whomever modified the
|
|
<i>hotjava</i> script and made it available on the Java-Linux site!
|
|
<hr>
|
|
|
|
<address><a href="http://vax2.rain.gen.mo.us/~layers/">Larry
|
|
Ayers<layers@vax2.rain.gen.mo.us></a></address>
|
|
|
|
<!-- hhmts start --> Last modified: Sat Oct 26 17:29:28 CDT 1996
|
|
<!-- hhmts end -->
|
|
|
|
<!--===================================================================-->
|
|
<P> <hr> <P>
|
|
<A HREF="./index.html"><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM SRC="../gx/indexnew.gif"
|
|
ALT="[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ]"></A>
|
|
<A HREF="../index.html"><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM SRC="../gx/homenew.gif"
|
|
ALT="[ FRONT PAGE ]"></A>
|
|
<A HREF="./linus.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/back2.gif"
|
|
ALT=" Back "></A>
|
|
<A HREF="./tkg.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/fwd.gif" ALT=" Next "></A>
|
|
<P> <hr> <P>
|
|
</body>
|
|
</html>
|