Java promises greater interactivity In January Joel Plutchak and Vladimir Tokarskiy, UIUC Department of Atmospheric Sciences research programmers, released the experimental Java version of the Visualizer. It promises greater interactivity as well as faster response time. The popularity of the Visualizer has been pushing the server into overload as it struggles to keep pace with requests for the compute-intensive maps. Java may relieve the strain by transmitting small chunks of program, called applets, along with the data so that maps are compiled on the user's computer rather than on the server. The client s computer does not interact with the server again until the client downloads new data.
More applets are in the works for zooming and map analysis.
Holly Korab is a science writer in the NCSA Publications Group. Return to the Table of Contents.