Session
jBrowCaps - Browser Independent Page Rendering for Java Servlets
Mike Slinn, Technical Business Strategist, mslinn.com, inc.
Track: Open Source
Date: Thursday, March 29
Time: 3:30pm
- 4:15pm
Location: Ballroom H
Java servlets and JSPs usually communicate with web browsers, but not all web browsers understand the same formatting controls. Some browsers support style sheets, but some browsers support support style sheets in different manners and degrees. Older browsers don't support style sheets at all. Microsoft's ASP language provides a partial solution with their 'browcaps' browser detection, but they don't provide an ability to automatically generate the appropriate markup to render the desired result on particular browsers. The now defunct Internet Factory's SMX language did provide the ability to detect the browser and render to it appropriately; but unfortunately SMX was 'write only' as it was incomprehensible to read, and not supported by HTML editors.
The author will discuss and demonstrate a solution to this problem that does not require much runtime computation, supports all existing browsers (including WML and XML), is easily extended to future browsers, works with HTML editors, and uses style sheets as the definition mechanism for defining the desired markup. The style sheets are then parsed and reconstituted in such a manner as to be able to be rendered for any browser, even if they don't understand style sheets.
The author will make the code available under an open source license prior to the presentation.