Hello, is there any chance I could persuade you guys to remove the Java applet from the front page, until such time as Sun's Java plugin stops regularly crashing or seizing up so many browsers? After all, Processing does so many things *besides* making applets to put in web pages, some of the people who will be put off by this really don't need to be!

Can't you use JavaScript to get information about which version of Java is installed anyway?

Here you go:

Code:

<!-- version checker, helps us know what version of java (and whether it is installed) -->
        <APPLET CODE="version" CODEBASE="download/" WIDTH=1 HEIGHT=1>
        <IMG SRC="/download/version.gif" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1" />
        </APPLET>  

As for the Java plugin crashing browsers... this is a very well-known problem, and I'm surprised if it's the first you've heard of it. I'm using Firefox, under Ubuntu, but that's not the only browser/OS combination that's been known to have severe difficulties.

Aah, thanks! I looked for <object> and "Java", not for the deprecated applet tag.
And as I wrote, it is not the first time I have heard of the problem, so I was sincerely interested to know which are the problematic cases.

If your browser crashes when it comes across an applet tag, shouldn't you disable your Java plug-in (or compiz, if it's that particular bug)? The solution to this problem isn't to pressure the entire web to stop using applets (especially Processing, where applets continue to be a primary distribution mechanism). If anything, more websites should use applets so that serious bugs like this one are caught before they make it into the standard configuration of mainstream linux distributions.

Yes it is a particular bug affecting Ubuntu, either this one or another:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/224798

The information that we get--regarding the exact Java version, the CPU type, and info about the operating system is extremely valuable for us making decisions about what we support with our (extremely limited) resources (Casey and I).

If there's another way to get the same information via JavaScript, we'd happily do that. (Not similar, the same.)

We don't particularly like having a JVM kick on when you visit the home page, but to be honest, the likelihood that you'll be seeing a Java applet soon is awfully high.

I'm sorry that it can crash some Linux browsers, but we can't be blamed for that, and the percentage of people this affects is not enough to outweigh its usefulness to us. (And if you know that Java crashes your browser, why isn't it turned off already?)

I'm not aware (and I'd be surprised if Sun were aware) of the Java plugin simply crashing Windows machines. That's a showstopper--there's no point in making a Java plugin if its sole purpose (delivering applets) is actually broken. I can imagine that there is some smaller percentage for whom it's broken, but again, this number is outweighed by the usefulness to us, and Sun (or Microsoft or Mozilla or whomever) needs to fix the bug.

One thought would be that we could set a cookie, and only load the applet for people who haven't been cookie-fied. This would be a bit of hacking, but might be worthwhile to lessen the annoyance of the startup (which I see as a bigger issue than the crashing).

Or Sun could get their s* together and release Java 6u10 for Windows and Linux, and Apple could follow suit in some time shorter than 18 months and without waiting for Snow Leopard. (Don't mind if I just blame someone else, do you? )