San Mateo, CA (November 18, 1996) — Playing the role of developer’s advocate, Microsoft plans to release a Java virtual machine plug-in for its competitor Netscape’s Navigator browser.
“This was something developers asked us to do. There have been inconsistencies in [Netscape] implementations,” said Charles Fitzgerald, program manager in the Microsoft Internet Platform and Tools Division, in Redmond, WA.
The plug-in, which will be available for free by the end of the month from Microsoft’s Web site, will allow Navigator users to run Java applets with Microsoft’s virtual machine, officials said.
While citing quality issues, officials also claim a roughly 30 percent performance boost running applets within Navigator equipped with Microsoft’s virtual machine plug-in, versus Netscape’s Java virtual machine that is included in Version 3.0 of Navigator.
This move is Microsoft’s most recent attempt to garner developer support for its products and technologies. With this plug-in for its competitor’s browser, the company is attempting to keep developers loyal to Microsoft tools and technology, even when they are using Netscape products.
Microsoft’s is the official reference implementation of the Win32 Java virtual machine. In January, the company will release a 16-bit Windows 3.1 version of Internet Explorer 3.0, which will include a Windows 3.1 Java virtual machine implementation.
The company has no definite plans to release that component as a separate standalone Java virtual machine for Windows 3.1, according to Fitzgerald.
IBM has posted an alpha test version of its own 16-bit Windows Java virtual machine on its alphaWorks Web site for Java developers.
Microsoft is pursuing a widespread distribution strategy for its virtual machine technology, bundling it with Windows NT and Windows 95 via its Internet Explorer browser. The virtual machine will also ship in forthcoming Java development tools from such vendors as Borland and Powersoft, a division of Sybase Inc., and in a variety of third-party applications, according to Fitzgerald.
Other Microsoft Java technology, slated for rollout in Internet Explorer 4.0 and subsequent releases of the company’s tools and platforms, includes a superset of the Abstract Windowing Toolkit, class libraries for multimedia, two-dimensional, and Dynamic HTML.
The company’s forthcoming Java extensions, detailed at this month’s Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, include improved debugging APIs, versioning, state and persistence, security options beyond the language’s current “sandbox” model, and server-side integration.
