1

Oracle is planning to make its JRE paid from Jan 2019 onwards. We need to find another vendor that supplies the Java Web plugin for free. Do any of the OpenJDK vendors provide this plugin? Oracle hosts the plugin on this link - https://www.java.com/en/download/

Divi
  • 11
  • 1
  • 1
    Whether or not there is OpenJDK support for applets I don't know, but I do know that applets are considered an obsolete technology by most professionals (and have been for the past decade). I think your options are "pay Oracle" and "replace applets with HTML5 + JS based solutions". Which of these is the better option depends on the size of the codebase and how long you intend to keep on supporting them. – Jeroen Steenbeeke Oct 29 '18 at 13:41
  • @JeroenSteenbeeke We do have a plan to remove the applet entirely, but that will cross the deadline that Oracle has (January 2019). So, we just need an alternative for maybe 3-4 months until we release the new technology. – Divi Oct 30 '18 at 11:50

1 Answers1

0

Certainly the OpenJDK has the java.applet.Applet and javax.swing.JApplet classes. That is all that is needed, technically, to enable applets. Of course, using them in a browser, at least for general consumption, is no longer an option.

But why use Java? Recent developments allow most traditional Java applets and Java applications (both) to be run in JavaScript. The process is still in beta, but it has been highly successful. Development is all in Java; deployment is in Java and JavaScript simultaneously. Minimal recoding is necessary, mainly to reconfigure threads to be "state-like" and not require wait() and notify(). And the same for dialogs. But our experience is that both of these issues are easily worked around. It's not perfect. Certainly there are limitations -- a few missing Swing classes, "not so long" long numbers. Speed 15-30% Java. Some pretty major applications have been converted. (Jmol was the first.)

For more information, see https://github.com/BobHanson/java2script for details.

user2220862
  • 41
  • 1
  • 3
  • We do have a plan to remove the applet entirely, but that will cross the deadline that Oracle has (January 2019). So, we just need an alternative for maybe 3-4 months until we release the new technology. – Divi Oct 30 '18 at 06:46