Sun Microsystems is fending off reports that Java doesn't jive with the upcoming Microsoft Windows Vista operating system. Java SE 6 is due in November; Vista will be out early in 2007.
"There were various areas where Vista had changed substantially [from] Windows XP that we needed to account for," architect for the Java desktop client group at Sun, Chet Haase, said. One of the more visible issues was with the Vista Aero Glass desktop manager, which provides a translucent graphical effect. The way Microsoft used graphics subsystems clashed with Java. So Java engineers performed a work-around.
"Some folks have noticed that when they run Java applets in the browser, that Aero and desktop composition would get disabled," software architect for the Windows Presentation Foundation at Microsoft, Greg Schechter, wrote in a recent blog.
Sun has since addressed the issue, which was attributed to Java locking the primary buffer, denying Desktop Windows Manager access to the resources needed to draw the desktop, Schechter wrote.
Versions of Java prior to the eighth update of Java SE 5.0 will function with Vista, but they disable the Desktop Windows Manager.
Java SE 6 has received most of Sun's attention during the Vista beta release time frame, and it is where most of the fixes to the known problems reside, Sun's Haase wrote in a recent blog.
"We encourage the breadth of the developer ecosystem to target the world's leading development platform and are glad that the Java community sees the advantages of running applets on Windows Vista," said Jaye Roxe, Visual Studio group product manager at Microsoft, Jaye Roxe, said.
Other highlights of Java SE 6 include the ability to mix JavaScript with Java, more desktop APIs, and security enhancements.
