Friday, August 05, 2005

JDistro desktop java

JDistro is an all-Java desktop environment and is available as an open source project. At first, I thought that this project is one of the crappy things that people might come up with. I thought that this project is a plain waste of time and effort. But wait, this project has potential. Combine it Java Web Start and it could be a potential rich-client platform. In the consulting sector of the IT world, the name of the game these days is thin client. Where centralization and cost-savings is of the aspects that are taken into consideration when it comes to a succesful sales. I know the pitfalls of having a web-based framework as well as web-based application. Yes, you go thin, but you compromise functionality, rich functionality. Having all other issues such as network performance, security, availability, etc., which can all be addressed by thin clients, there are still things that lack in it. Namely, user's affinity with client-server applications, user's preferrence for the rich/thick client. Coming back to JDistro, it may be a good platform to be leveraged on. It can a good hosting mechanism for modularized Swing-based programs that people might develop. In my company, the latest craze is thin client. Though I oblige to this, I am still an adherent to rich platforms (Swing or SWT). I'll evaluate JDistro and if it proves to be useful, hope I can turn some PHB heads around this time.

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