Saying that it will better address problems that Sun Microsystems Inc has been unable to resolve, Microsoft Corp will have its official Win32 Reference implementation of the Java virtual machine in beta test by the end of the year, reports our sister newsletter Online Reporter. Internet platform program manager Charles Fitzgerald says Microsoft will be able to execute better on things like a class library and Just-In-Time compilers. Meantime Microsoft said it would honor all parts of its contract with Sun’s JavaSoft Inc division, under which Microsoft, like all licensees, has to keep all the application programming interfaces up to date on its Web site. Redmond now says it will do as much, but will push its own interfaces where it has an alternative. But it’s all a bit confused right now as to how far this will go. One part of Microsoft last week suggested it would use the JavaBeans application interface set for instance, while another said it wouldn’t. Microsoft also plans to release a Java virtual machine plug-in for Netscape Communications Corp’s Navigator browser which, it claims, can execute 30% faster than Navigator. Netscape scoffs at this move, saying that Microsoft’s Java execution speed advantage will be forgotten in about three months. Of course, Netscape may stop its scoffing if Microsoft gets its way and slaps some widely-adopted ActiveX or Distributed Common Object Model extensions onto Java that would be accessible only to Netscape users through the plug-in. Fitzgerald says Microsoft plans to do such an integration with, for example, its Viper transaction processing software. For the Internet Explorer 4.0 virtual machine, Microsoft’s plans include a supercharged Abstract Windowing Toolkit, multimedia and database class libraries, the ability to circumvent Java’s sand-box security, some administration tools, and Viper support. Microsoft will do Internet Explorer versions of the virtual machine for Solaris, HP-UX, and Linux versions of Unix, and it is working with Metrowerks Inc on a Macintosh version.
