HotJava

{{Short description|Web browser}}

{{for|the productivity software suite|HotJava Views}}

{{Infobox software

| logo =

| screenshot = MainPage-HotJava3-Optim.png

| caption = HotJava 3.0 under Windows XP

| developer = Sun Microsystems

| released = {{Start date and age|1997|03|24}}{{cite web|last=Rakitin |first=Jason |title=Review: Alternative Web browsers |url=http://www.nwfusion.com/news/1997/1027browser2.html |publisher=Network World Fusion |access-date=August 16, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20011005005015/http://www.nwfusion.com/news/1997/1027browser2.html |archive-date=October 5, 2001 |date=October 27, 1997 |url-status=dead }}{{cite web|url=http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Sun+Microsystems%2c+Inc.+to+Ship+HotJava+Browser+1.0%3b+New+Customizable...-a019198262|title=Sun Microsystems, Inc. to Ship HotJava Browser 1.0; New Customizable Browser Enables Custom Web Interface|publisher=Business Wire|date=March 11, 1997|access-date=June 10, 2014|archive-date=July 28, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140728050819/http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Sun+Microsystems%2c+Inc.+to+Ship+HotJava+Browser+1.0%3b+New+Customizable...-a019198262|url-status=dead}}

| latest release version = Late {{Start date and age|2004}} v3.0

| latest release date =

| latest preview version =

| latest preview date =

| programming language = Java

| operating system =

| language = English

| discontinued = yes

| genre = Web browser

| license =

| website = [https://web.archive.org/web/20171112150428/http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/index-136232.html www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/index-136232.html]

}}

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.{{cite web|last=Watson|first=Dave|title=A Quick Look at HotJava|url=http://www.scoug.com/os24u/2001/hotjava.html|publisher=The Southern California OS/2 User Group|access-date=August 16, 2010|date=July 21, 2001}} It has since been discontinued and is 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.{{cite web | title=Sun Download Center Decommission | website=oracle.com | url=http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/indexes/downloads/sdlc-decommission-333274.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110806075314/http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/indexes/downloads/sdlc-decommission-333274.html | archive-date=2011-08-06 | url-status=dead | access-date=2011-10-29 }}

Origins

In 1994, a team of Oak/Java developers started writing WebRunner, which was a clone of the web browser Mosaic. It was based on the Java programming language. The name ‘WebRunner’ was a tribute to the Blade Runner movie.{{cite web|last=Byous|first=Jon|title=Java Technology: An Early History|url=http://gcc.upb.de/www/WI/WI2/wi2_lit.nsf/7544f3043ee53927c12573e70058bbb6/abf8d70f07c12eb3c1256de900638899/$FILE/Java%20Technology%20-%20An%20early%20history.pdf|publisher=Sun Microsystems|access-date=November 24, 2010|year=1998}} The official Java name was adopted a year later in 1995 when Sun decided to make Oak public and integrate it with the web.

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.

The parser code was reused by the standard Java libraries.{{cite web | title=HTMLEditorKit (Java 2 Platform SE v1.4.2) | website=docs.oracle.com | url=http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/javax/swing/text/html/HTMLEditorKit.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120109001722/http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/javax/swing/text/html/HTMLEditorKit.html | archive-date=2012-01-09 | url-status=dead | quote=The default parser is the Hot Java parser | access-date=2012-12-31 }}

Usage

HotJava had somewhat limited functionality compared to other browsers of its time.

More critically, HotJava suffered from the inherent performance limitations of Java virtual machine implementations of the day (both in terms of processing speed and memory consumption) and hence was considerably sluggish.{{cite book | last=Killelea | first=Patrick | title=Web Performance Tuning: Speeding Up the Web | publisher=O'Reilly Media, Incorporated | series=O'Reilly Series | year=2002 | isbn=978-0-596-00172-8 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sX60mAi0eQUC&pg=PA378 | edition=2nd | page=378}}

See also

References

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