Re:Eh? (Score 1)

It's a UI component architecture. It was orginally developed as an IDE, but people are realizing that it is the best, last hope for Java to make any inroads on the desktop for the general user. It will become more of a client-side portal. People will develop modern versions of applets to plug into it, and there will be standard "portlets" to provide a non-programmatic methods of quickly developing UIs. The advantage of a client-side portal is that it is much cheaper to run the presentation management on each client's machine rather than pay for server farms to remote manage presentation. It also allows the user to mix and match "portlets" from various sites onto a single customized page.