HotJava (later called HotJava Browser to distinguish it from HotJava Views) was a modular, extensible

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

from Sun Microsystems implemented in

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

. It was the first browser to support

Java applet Java applets were small applications written in the Java programming language, or another programming language that compiles to Java bytecode, and delivered to users in the form of Java bytecode. The user launched the Java applet from a ...

s, and was Sun's demonstration platform for the then-new technology. 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.

Origins

In 1994, a team of Java developers started writing WebRunner, which was a clone of the internet browser

Mosaic A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...

. It was based on the

programming language. The name ‘WebRunner’ was a tribute to the ''

Blade Runner ''Blade Runner'' is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, and written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick' ...

'' movie. WebRunner's first public demonstration was given by

John Gage John Burdette Gage (born October 9, 1942) was the 21st employee of Sun Microsystems, where he is credited with creating the phrase The Network is the Computer. He served as vice president and chief researcher and director of the Science Office ...

and

James Gosling James Gosling (born May 19, 1955) is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the founder and lead designer behind the Java programming language. Gosling was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2004 for the conception ...

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.

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.

References

External links

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HotJava @ Evolt
*

Discontinued web browsers Java platform software Sun Microsystems software {{web-software-stub

Origins

Usage

See also

References

External links