Why do certain services still depend on the Java plugin?

Question

Banks, digital certificates, government service websites still depend on the plugin java.

The idea of Java, "write once, run anywhere" is not always true.

Many services still have platform-specific requirements, only run on Windows and pose a problem for users on other platforms.

What the plugin Java offers in functional terms that modern browsers cannot solve?

Answer 1

The main thing is that these plugins how Java provides almost unrestricted access to your computer. This is great "advantage" of having an application running Java in the browser. At least that was the reason in the past.

The browser is extremely limited when it comes to doing anything outside of it, outside draw a page and make basic communication within certain limits with the server where it is chatting in that context.

Of course it is common to have some limitations, these plugins still run on virtual machines but the limitation is much smaller than the browser "pure".

In addition to this usually the language and libraries available are usually a little more powerful giving more tools for the programmer to work. This has been more true in the past, but there is still more functionality in these plugins.

It is also possible to achieve better performance with Java or some plugin gender but the choice is not usually made because of this.

There is a tendency to no longer use this type of feature because it even helps to bring security problems to the machine of its users. Also many people can’t even get along with the installation of plugin and either give up or pay a technician to do for them.

If you consider that sites that need this today have been replaced by native mobile apps they should probably have native applications for major operating systems desktop and eliminate this kind of need. So would be in the website only the basic functionality that the web can provide by default. And an even more powerful and perhaps safer application can be used when you need something more powerful.

It will probably give less problem you have to install an application that the plugin.

One reason they still use Java is because in the past they used Java. So they don’t want to do anything new. There was a reason to use Java but no more.

In addition many programmers choose to do it in Java because that’s what they know or like. Even if you don’t need it specifically, you don’t need to "rotate anywhere," it’s chosen. This, of course, can apply to any language or platform.

Some people find the "Compile philosophy once on every platform and run anywhere" found in C/C++ and other languages to be better and more portable. Of course there may be disadvantages too.

Note that there are restrictions on these plugins, they fell into disuse and since version 9 of Java it is considered deprecated and should no longer be used, and Java itself is heading for another model better than the original even when it was not the plugin.

Answer 2

The Java plugin is nothing more than something that is used to embed Java applets on web pages, similar to what is done with Flash. Its purpose is only to make Java applications available in browsers and not to give any superpowers to browsers. It’s true that in the old days browsers didn’t have a lot of resources to do some things, and then it was easier to use Java or Flash to do something that browsers weren’t able to (i.e., have superpowers). But today’s browsers have full powers to replace all or almost every case where Java or Flash would be justified.

The "write once, run anywhere" part is half true. It’s the original idea and you’re still trying to keep it, but some accidents along the way broke it. One of these first accidents was the Java virtual machine made by Microsoft around 1998 or 1999, in which there were several Windows specific classes invented by Microsoft within the package java.awt and that did not exist in other Vms. This ended up yielding a beautiful lawsuit from Sun against Microsoft and made Microsoft jump out of Java and invent C#.

Other road accidents that arose were the glaring differences between J2ME and J2SE, as many classes of J2SE did not exist in J2ME and vice versa and J2ME had considerable restrictions, the "write once, run anywhere" paradigm was violated. With the death by starvation of J2ME and without anything official or useful coming from Sun/Oracle to take its place, Google went ahead and launched Android. But again, the significant differences in the Android API for Java SE imply another break from the paradigm "write once, run anywhere".

There are more things that lead to the violation of the paradigm, many of them the fault of the programmer. One way to violate this paradigm is to rely on nonportable details of the operating system, such as explicitly using paths like C:\Users\Abc on Windows or depending on the fact x.txt and X.TXT be two separate files on Linux.

Another thing that can lead to the violation of the paradigm is when the program in Java depends on parts made in native code that are only available in a given operating system, or in the case of Java applets, when they are made to interact with browser-specific Apis (ex: Internet Explorer).

There are also cases where the paradigm is violated on purpose, where the applet simply refuses to load if it realizes it is not running in the browser the developer wanted or the operating system the developer wanted.