Peter

You wrote:
>
> I think this is something they have been meaning to do for many
> years, but it is 'vaporware' at present. Has anyone actually used
> this applet plugin? It looks to me like they will have to do what VW
> has already done. More re-use in the Smalltalk communities would
> be a good thing.

I'm sorry to correct you Peter, but in fact the Dolphin applet browser
plug-in was first demonstrated in March 1997, so, on the contrary, we will
not need to do a lot of what VW has "already done", because we did it
ourselves yonks ago (i.e. downloading binary code modules on demand,
browser integration, etc). If you dowload and install the plug-in and run
the sample applets you will see that it works, even though the samples are
rather lacklustre. Some of our beta users at the time developed their own
applets too. You can view the HTML source and look in the browser cache for
the downloaded binary classes (.stc files) to convince yourself that it is
really doing it. Having said all that, you are correct that we don't
currently market a commercial product based on this technology, however, but
the reasons for that are not really technical.

As I recall John Maloney did a Netscape plug-in for Squeak around the same
time?

Oh, and ObjectShare have been in contact with us about collaborating on a
binary standard, which we will be most happy to do.

Regards

Blair McGlashan
Chief Technologist
Object Arts Ltd