What a Jini Needs

The Java Browser will not be a web browser written in Java. It will browse a peer-to-peer network of mobile java code and data. It will work like a normal web browser, except that instead of hopping from web page to web page via hyperlinks, users will hop from rich gui app to rich gui app via menus and buttons and commands. It will be the undesktop app, with all the power and flexibility of apps that fully live on your desktop, with all the ease and connectedness of thin-client apps.

To work, several things need to be made possible:

1. Transparent download and installation of the JRE. One will have to do an initial download and install of the application and a JRE (perhaps with Webstart's help), but thereafter, keeping up-to-date with the latest JRE should happen automatically. The JRE should be bundled with the app and should be independent of whatever system JRE might be installed elsewhere.


2. The main container application will be a jini browser that can get proxies from jini services. It will provide a sandbox for jini proxies to run in. The jini proxies will be entrance points to rich apps.


3. Jar dependencies should be tracked per app (per jini proxy) and cached on individuals machines for frequently used applications. Mobile apps will have to have some way of declaring their dependencies (jars and versions) and the container will have to have some means of finding and downloading (automatically of course) those third-party jars.


4. Will need custom class loaders to handle the dependency issues to allow multiple code bases to use differing versions of third-party libs.


5. Mobile code will have to declare their dependencies - not just libs, but JRE dependencies


6. The container will have to require that all downloaded mobile code be signed.


7. Security will have to be set up to disallow use of system resources unless the user allows it, and disallow net connections to multiple external ips, unless the user allows it. Preferably, these permissions can be bundled into a few simple-to-understand settings that allow users to grant permissions easily to the apps they like to use.


8. Would be nice if the container could require that any downloaded code is either open source and comes with the source for inspection, or licensed, such that the creator of the mobile code has bought and paid for a license to use the jini web.