Netscape Pledges to be Full of Java Beans

James Harding reports from the Devcon conference for Netscape developers in San Jose, California, on Java integration and bugs

Netscape has committed itself to Sun?s Java Beans technology, strengthening the anti-Microsoft alliance, with the first fruits of the technology expected to ship at the beginning of next year.

The company announced at its Devcon conference that it will work with Java partners IBM, Oracle and Sunsoft to integrate the Java Beans components technology with the Corba standard for object request brokers. The partners have submitted a proposal to the Object Management Group, Corba?s govern-ing body.

Netscape pledged that its Open Network Environment will allow C, C++, Corba, HTML as well as Javascript components to be used as Java Beans.

The company revealed that it is now shipping its latest flagship browser product, Communicator, and Suitespot 3 and announced that all Netscape services ? applications, debuggers and languages ? will be accessible via Javabeans by early 1998, when Netscape updates Communicator and Suitespot under the codenames Mercury and Apollo.

Eric Hahn, senior product vice president at Netscape, said Java Beans will become the building blocks for new applications. ?They can be dragged and dropped on to any HTML page, so anyone who can produce content can build applications,? he said.

The idea is that more people can use Javascript and Java Beans to add, place and link objects, buttons and databases on an HTML page to design an application, without having to write the associated code.

Hahn said developing applications and making them work with many environments is an expensive, difficult task. By allowing application design using internet standards, which work with any environment, Hahn claimed Netscape has listened to customers who want lower costs. ?It is inherently cross-platform and available on demand without downloading to the desktop,? he said.

Netscape is encouraging its developers to use the term ?crossware? to refer to its strategy. The details are outlined in a white paper written by chief technology officer Marc Andreessen.