(Last Updated 02/07/2001)
Based on the feedback received from various Macintosh users, here is what we know in regard to the performance of the uTestTM Java Applets on the Macintosh platform:
Why do IE 5 browsers on the Macintosh platform have a problem maintaining the test data? First a little background about Java....
Java is a programming language that gets compiled into "byte-code" and then interpretted at runtime by a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). The purpose of the JVM is to execute each Java byte-code instruction and handle all platform specific tasks such as byte ordering and memory management. By handling such platform specific tasks, the JVM essentially hides all platform specific implementations and thus allows the same Java byte-code to run on any platform. That is, no matter what platform that Java is running on (Unix, Windows, Macintosh, etc.), the JVM will ensure that the Java byte-code is executed the same way....essentially making Java "platform independent".
Unfortunately, true "platform independence" exists only in a perfect world. That is, each browser (Netscape, IE, etc.) had to implement their own JVM on each specific platform (Unix, Windows, Mac, etc.).... and unfortunately, there were some subtle differences (or bugs) in each implementation. Most of these differences were very minor ... relating to such things as the order in which certain tasks have to be performed or when exactly a specific Java method will throw an exception. Since the release of our Java-based Online Shopping System (uShop) back in 1997, we have come across many of these undocumented "features" in the JVMs of the various browsers/operating systems ... and through a little testing and determination, have been able to handle such subtle differences and/or create work-arounds for them.
One problem that we have not been able to overcome is a problem with how Internet Explorer browsers on the Macintosh platform do not maintain Static Class Data across different HTML pages/frames. That is, it appears that with IE 5 on the Macintosh platform, Static Class Data of applets on different pages or in different frames is not maintained. This, unfortunately, is something we're not going to be able to work-around.
So in summary, until the IE/Mac folks resolve that problem, all we can say is that:
"Macintosh users must use Netscape".
