Java fights Flash

The Java applets that could be embedded in any Web site couldn't compete with the smooth animation and anti-aliasing of Flash but 11 years later Sun is back to take another stab at owning user-level interaction.

11 years after it's great success, Java still can not compete with the smooth animation and anti-aliasing of Flash because Microsoft joined the battle with dynamic HTML, later reborn as AJAX. Now, Sun is coming back to take another stab at owning user-level interaction.

The task is harder because Adobe has AIR alongside Flex and Flash, all slightly different tools offering some functionality beyond HTML and JavaScript. Flash alone is on its 10th version and comes with more features than ever before.

Sun is now a bit better prepared for the battle. It has a rich stable of libraries for animation, including the well-regarded Java 2D, developed with Adobe to mimic much of the computational structure of PostScript. This is essential because some suggest that Flash beat out Java applets for Web animation because it offered smooth anti-aliasing.

If Java 2D is not enough, there are a huge panoply of open source libraries developed to handle almost any need a programmer might have.

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