Saturday, October 18, 2008

Flash 10, and Chrome + Java

Flash 10

In case you didn’t happen to notice, Adobe released Flash Player 10 this week.

I’ve downloaded it and it seems to work great.  Not sure about performance, but it is stable and nothing I’ve crossed “breaks” at least. 

Chrome/Chromium + Java – I didn’t know that!

When I’m not using my secondary desktop platform at work for image-building, I generally keep a personalized image on it with it loaded up with the latest weather radar or some other portal-type page.

Folks who drop by and visit me can see it and take a look at the latest news or information.

For kicks, I’ve been running the latest stable Chromium builds on it as the low-visibility GUI brings attention to the content, not the medium.

Normally when I load up the cool looking Talisker Computer Network Defense Operational Picture all the applets appear fine.

However, when I attempted it on that desktop system in Chromium, they did not.

First I checked to make sure Java was installed, it was (Java SE 6, update 7). It worked in IE 7 and 8 just find.  It worked in Firefox just fine.  But not Chrome/Chromium.

Strangely the page did load fine in Chrome/Chromium on my laptop.

I looked at the page code and it became clear that the applets were Java-based.

I typed about: plugins in the Chromium address bar and looking through the plugin list, found that Java was not listed, even though it was installed.

Hmmm.

Off to the Googles!

Turns out Chrome/Chromium demands the developmental (beta) versions of Java; Java SE 6 Update 10 b32 is now available.

So if you are expecting Java applets (not Java Script) to work for some reason in Chrome and they don’t, this is the likely reason why not.

I’ve been running both the latest (public) versions of Java (Java 6, update 7) as well as Java 6, update 10 betas along side each other for quite some time now and not had any issues at all.

Anyway.  There you go on that bit of interesting info.

Unrelated but cool:

--Claus

3 comments:

comment gravity well said...

for kicks without getting kicked in the head I suggest you upgrade to the chromium fork without the draconian bent: Iron

;)

Claus said...

@CGW - I have looked at Iron as well. Granted I haven't spent nearly as much time with it as I have with the main Chromium trunk.

I will say I haven't gone back to "Chrome" standard ever since.

The Chromium builds have been remarkably stable for the sites I frequent. It's very nice.

If all goes well this week, I will share two other Chrome/Chromium finds that dove-tail with Iron a bit. You might already know where I'm going with those utilities....

Cheers!

comment gravity well said...

@Claus

Would that include GreaseMetal? (which needs more polite pressure applied to support Chromium (and forks).

I would have spent more time with the mainline version of Chromium, but haven't for the same reasons I don't feel comfortable using Chrome. As a bonus Iron has crude adblocking built-in. Fanboy might be releasing an Iron specific version of his list! :)

I'll wait for the new java plug-in architecture to mature out of beta.. in the mean time I continue to start Iron with disable java switches.

Flash 10 has some interesting potential, and the flip side AIR seems like a new portal for abuse... no matter how much sand they might pack in.

Beta java is one impediment. AIR is another impediment. RLZ is unacceptable.

Now if the chromium team can develop and extensibility scheme that mozilla should have released in version 2 of firefox perhaps they can be shamed into sensible extensions with the same loading speed.

IE8 sits laughably on the sideline