Cupertino, California-based Utilities vendor Symantec Corp, says it will beat Borland International Inc and Microsoft Corp to market with its visual development tool for Java, Visual Cafe, and release a beta within the next two weeks. Symantec claims Microsoft Corp’s Visual J++ – which debuted in beta last month (CI No 2,956) is stalled until late autumn, putting it ahead of the Redmonder. Borland’s Latte tool is expected by the end of the year. Visual Cafe, Latte and Visual J++ all have graphical front-ends, unlike Symantec’s earlier Java tool, simply called Cafe.The full release of Visual Caf+ will ship in early fall, with separate versions for Macintosh and Windows 95/NTand is expected to cost about $200. The rapid application development tool set enables users to visually create Java-powered applications and applets and is bundled with a just in time compiler. Meanwhile, Symantec announced Friday it’s shipping Cafe 1.5 tool for Java on Windows 95/NT for $130, or free for existing users. It claims the update’s compiler runs 500% faster than the 1.2 release.
