Twelve years after the original Java applet in the browser announcement, the march to a richer GUI runtime in the browser seems to be back on. On the heels of Adobe announcing the plan to open source its Flex 3 SDK, Microsoft entered the race with an open source (BSD-ish licensed) Silverlight, a cross-platform, cross-browser version of the .NET Windows Presentation Foundation.
All of a sudden, what didn't work a decade ago is being tauted as something new again. And this time, there are indications that the whole thing might just work.
Of course, Linux is absent from Microsoft's definition of cross-platform (Windows and Mac OS X is all they care about). Fortunately, it looks like the Mono project will do a Silverlight implementation:
Miguel de Icaza: It makes tons of sense for us to start looking at an implementation of Silverlight on Linux with Mono. There is already a XAML loader, it is the perfect excuse to use Antigrain for high-speed graphics and that only leaves the pesky media issue to be solved.
Now, what about Java? Are people so tired of the Java on the client story that we have already lost?
Not necessarily. It is true that Java in the browser has been neglected for many years. However, many of the basic ingredients that make up Flash or Silverlight are already there in Java.
If only someone can produce a stripped down version for the browsers.
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