Yet that’s exactly what is happening with Sun Microsystems’ Java, a new computer “language” that promises to bring the Internet to life with animation and interactivity. Netscape, which makes the leading software to cruise the World Wide Web, has already included Java in its latest version of Navigator 2.0. And online services, software companies and popular Web sites are getting ready to incorporate Java technology.
Why the excitement? Java lets computer jockeys create sites on the Web that include animation, moving text and interactive games. Right now, a typical Web site is little more than a series of linked text screens. To do anything fancy–listen to an audio clip, view a video-people usually need two things: a superpowerful PC or even workstation, plus lots of robust and costly software. Java’s beauty is that it sends you, over your phone line, all the extra computational horsepower and software you might need. Want to digitally test-drive a new car, via a dealer’s Web page? Java will send you a chunk of software–an “applet”–that turns your PC momentarily into a TV screen. Your Jeepster, say, careers through a desert, and maybe you just buy it.
The potential is limitless, which means the Web is about to become a very different place. Time Warner’s Pathfinder Web site,for instance, will use Java to create some of the Web’s first animated logos. Starwave’s ESPNet is exploring live updates of player stats of games in progress–one day, perhaps, with live action clips of key big plays. Wired magazine’s popular HotWired site is working on things like allowing its users to send instant messages to each other while they’re cruising the Web. “In another six months,” says David Sanner, HotWired’s vice president of technology, “it’ll take the Web to the next level.” The once static Web, in other words, is about to come alive.
Java began brewing in 1990. A research group at Sun, led by software designer James Gosling, tried to figure out a way to get home appliances to work together through the computer chips that control them. Their first target, personal digital assistants (PDAs), failed to gain popularity. So did their next option, set-top boxes for interactive television. But then, people all over the country began exploring the Internet via the World Wide Web. “We had done all this stuff to do distributed, interactive content over networks, and the Web was just a great place to do that,” Gosling says. So they built a browser, HotJava, that could show off what they’d done.
Animation is Java’s holy grail. “People are going to see a Web that’s much livelier,” says Gosling. Already, a juggling club at the University of Illinois has animated instructions on how to juggle. “It’s the difference between black-and-white TV and color,” says Eric Schmidt, Sun’s chief technology officer.
By making Java available to anyone who uses the Web, Sun hopes it will become a de facto standard. Sun’s biggest break came from the folks at Netscape. When Java came out, Netscape announced it’d incorporate it into its own wildly popular browser. That endorsement was critical, Schmidt admits. “You have more than 70 percent of the Web using it.” Netscape was attracted by Java’s hottest feature: it works on all kinds of different computers. In a world divided into Macs versus Windows PCs, that’s almost a revolution in itself.
With that kind of promise, Java won’t long be the only game in town. Microsoft already plans to publish a rival software, code-named Blackbird. Unlike Java, which the user must program, Blackbird is supposed to allow amateur designers to create interactive online content by letting them place text, photos, video and sound with the click of a mouse.
But Blackbird isn’t an open standard like Java; it’s based on proprietary Microsoft technology. Small wonder that the boys from Redmond are lukewarm about Java. Mike Con,e, in charge of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser, takes a wait-and-see attitude: “Demos are nice, but I need to understand what I can do with it.”
Microsoft has reason to be nervous. It doesn’t dominate the online world the way it does the world of desktops. Some experts already predict that the day of the PC will end with the dawning of the network. Many are quietly rooting for Sun. “Java has captured the imagination of the Internet,” says Tim Oren, vice president of CompuServe’s Internet division. “The notion of a competitor out there to keep Microsoft honest doesn’t break our hearts.” Sounds as though Java might be just their cup of tea.
