Bringing behavior to the Internet

James Gosling, SUN Microsystems
jag@sun.com

Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Stanford University December 1, 1995

 

HotJava is yet another web browser. A traditional web browser understands many protocols and data formats. The code to support these is tied together in one big lump. In contrast, HotJava understands no protocols or data formats. What it does understand is how to dynamically link code from elsewhere on the net into its address space in a manner that is safe from viruses, has good performance, and is architecture-neutral. WebRunner uses the names of things, like protocols, to derive names for classes that it links in dynamically. One extension to web browsing that we've added is the ability to attach code fragments to web pages, enabling interactive content. Pages can contain games, simulations, live data, and complex forms. This talk will talk about HotJava and the underlying Java language.

 

James Gosling received a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Calgary, Canada in 1977. He received a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1983. The title of his thesis was "The Manipulation of Algebraic Constraints". He is currently a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems. He has built satellite data acquisition systems, a multiprocessor version of Unix, several compilers, mail systems and window managers. He has also built a WYSIWYG text editor, a constraint based drawing editor and a text editor called `Emacs' for Unix systems. At Sun his early activity was been as lead engineer of the NeWS window system. More recently he has been the lead engineer for the OAK/Java/HotJava system.

More information on Java is available from java.sun.com, including overviews and presentations.

 

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