Three Monkeys, Three Typewriters, Two Days

October 9, 2005

Java plugin fun

I recently installed the Sun Java plug-in for the first time in years to test a patch I was making. A bit of testing quickly showed that:

  1. It has a tendency to randomly hang (and hang the browser with it, of course).
  2. It has a tendency to assume that any failure on the browser's part to respond to some sort of IPC-type stuff (e.g. because the browser is suspended in a debugger) means that it's time to print out that there is a bug in the browser and call exit().
  3. It just happens to leak both the plugin host and the JVM manager.

Combined with the code I was actually changing, I devoutly hope I have as little interaction as possible with plug-ins in the future.

Posted by bzbarsky at October 9, 2005 3:03 PM
Comments

I wish, so badly, that Mozilla would fix the inter-opperability problems with the Java stuff in Windows. It is the bane of my life - you visit a website with 10 other tabs open - woop - one has a piece of java in it - bang - there goes Firefox!

Posted by: Tom on October 9, 2005 5:30 PM

This is why I keep Java disabled. ;)

Posted by: Boris on October 9, 2005 5:34 PM

Ah, but Boris, what of those that do not?!

Posted by: Tom on October 10, 2005 2:39 AM

Java sucks, it is a thing of the past, nearly everything Java is used for can be archived in JavaScript and some even with CSS.

Posted by: Anonymous on October 10, 2005 4:11 AM

On windoze I use a trick to keep FF kinda usable after loading Java.
I first open Java in IE (the only use for it) , than in FF.
It saves a lot of startup time and makes sure FF's memusage doesn't skyrocket

Posted by: Peter van der Woude on October 10, 2005 4:22 AM

@Anonymous on October 10, 2005 04:11 AM: I thought Java was a programming language, and not a scripting language or style sheet, but now that you have informed me, I gonna go and create an office suit using JavaScript and CSS, instead of java! (http://www.thinkfree.com/products/index.jsp)

Posted by: Qt on October 10, 2005 5:43 AM

Tom, I got into this project because I started bugs that affected my browsing experience, and every so often I fall back on that original motivation. ;)

Qt, I assume "Anonymous" was mostly talking about the use of Java on the web (i.e. applets). That said, depending on what one means by "JavaScript" (in the Mozilla context), it could indeed be possible to write an office suite in it. After all, here we have a browser, HTML editor, email client, calendar all effectively written in JavaScript... ;)

Posted by: Boris on October 10, 2005 7:22 AM

Though I should clarify that I don't agree with Anonymous as far as "Java sucks". It's a reasonably nice programming language that's a lot more pleasant to use than lots of the other ones out there.

What I'm unhappy with here is the Java plug-in, not the Java language.

Posted by: Boris on October 10, 2005 7:26 AM
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