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220 Part Two Information Technology Infrastructure

Sun Microsystems in 1992. In November 13, 2006, Sun released much of Java
as open source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License
(GPL), completing the process on May 8, 2007.
The Java platform has migrated into cell phones, smartphones,
automobiles, music players, game machines, and finally, into set-top cable
television systems serving interactive content and pay-per-view services. Java
software is designed to run on any computer or computing device, regardless
of the specific microprocessor or operating system the device uses. Oracle
Corporation estimates that 3 billion devices are running Java, and it is the
most popular development platform for mobile devices running the Android
operating system (Taft, 2012). For each of the computing environments in
which Java is used, Sun created a Java Virtual Machine that interprets Java
programming code for that machine. In this manner, the code is written
once and can be used on any machine for which there exists a Java Virtual
Machine.
Java developers can create small applet programs that can be embedded
in Web pages and downloaded to run on a Web browser. A Web browser is
an easy-to-use software tool with a graphical user interface for displaying Web
pages and for accessing the Web and other Internet resources. Microsoft’s
Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome browser are examples.
At the enterprise level, Java is being used for more complex e-commerce and
e-business applications that require communication with an organization’s
back-end transaction processing systems.

HTML and HTML5
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is a page description language for
specifying how text, graphics, video, and sound are placed on a Web page and
for creating dynamic links to other Web pages and objects. Using these links,
a user need only point at a highlighted keyword or graphic, click on it, and
immediately be transported to another document.
HTML was originally designed to create and link static documents
composed largely of text. Today, however, the Web is much more social and
interactive, and many Web pages have multimedia elements—images, audio,
and video. Third-party plug-in applications like Flash, Silverlight, and Java
have been required to integrate these rich media with Web pages. However,
these add-ons require additional programming and put strains on computer
processing. This is one reason Apple dropped support for Flash on its mobile
devices. The next evolution of HTML, called HTML5, solves this problem
by making it possible to embed images, audio, video, and other elements
directly into a document without processor-intensive add-ons. HTML5
will also make it easier for Web pages to function across different display
devices, including mobile devices as well as desktops, and it will support
the storage of data offline for apps that run over the Web. Web pages will
execute more quickly, and look like smartphone apps. Although HTML5 is
still under development, elements are already being used in a number of
Internet tools, including Apple’s Safari browsers, Google Chrome, and recent
versions of the Firefox Web browser. Google’s Gmail and Google Reader have
adopted parts of the HTML5 standard as well. Web sites listed as “iPad ready”
are making extensive use of HTML5 including CNN, The New York Times,
and CBS.

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