Applications designed to make Java easier to use for the rest-of- us are beginning to proliferate and latest pretender to the throne is Nashua, New Hampshire-based Aimtech Corp with its newly released Jamba 2.0 web authoring kit. Version 2.0 includes a timeline animation tool to enable the sequencing of graphic movements and actions such as fade, rotate, hide and zoom; data collection and data publishing capabilities including an electronic mail object to enable the creation of feedback forms in Jamba with a submit button that can send the feedback via an e-mail message; a File Transfer Protocol object for creating survey forms to store multiple records and a CGI object to enable authors to execute and pass information to and from Jamba using CGI scripts. Other new additions include Jamba wizards to enable quick-and-easy components such as banner ads, tickertape text and multi-page presentations, smaller Jamba Java classes – (40-130K in size) – an updated user interface and user defined variables, mathematical computations and Boolean conditional processing support. Jamba is designed to be used alongside HTML editors for enhancing web pages with interactive elements such as dynamic pages which can react to user input or act by themselves. Aimtech says it will add higher level design functionality, a JDBC add-on tool and a Macintosh version of Jamba 2.0 in due course. Jamba goes from $349. It’s available on Windows 95 and NT. It supports Sun Microsystems Java Virtual Machine.
