Java Applets Making a Comeback?

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What do you think of when you hear the words ”Java applet?” For most, this brings to mind slow, buggy, useless little applications that run in the Web browser. They are the quintessential Web 1.0 way to add interactive features to a Web page, and they largely failed to catch on. Newer, faster technologies such as Flash and Ajax—and better browser support for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript standards—relegated Java applets to the dust bin of Internet history. Or did they?

Ethan Nichols, a lead engineer for the Yahoo! Publishing Tools Team at Sun Microsystems, recently posted a blog entry describing the new plug-in support for Java 6 update 10. This new applet system attempts to solve some of the biggest problems developers face when using Java applets, including:

• Difficulty detecting which Java plug-in is installed in a browser
• Difficulty automatically installing or upgrading the Java plug-in
• Large (slow!) downloads
• Slow start-up time for applets
• Confusion between Java Applets (that run in your browser) and Java Web Start applications (that download over the Internet but don’t actually run in the browser)

To accomplish this, the Java team has developed a new Java “kernel” which is much smaller and loads only the components of the Java environment that are necessary to run the applet. This should reduce both download size and applet startup time considerably. Other improvements include better integration with JavaScript (to make it easier for Web developers to add applets to Web pages), better reliability, and better control of the Java run-time environment in the browser.

So will this mean a resurgence of applets on the Web? Only time will tell.