An Historical History of Java Applets

I have stumbled across an eleven year old (2000 vintage) article, which already describes Applets as if they were "has been" technology. I quote:

SUN Microsystems introduced Java applets with much fanfare back in 1995. Applets immediately took the web world by storm because they added the ability to display dynamic web content within browsers in what was essentially a static HTML world.

During those initial days, it appeared that using Java applets was the best way to add dynamic content to web pages [but when] Dynamic HTML finally started taking shape, things changed drastically. The Document Object Model (DOM) exposes elements within a web page as programmable components with their own set of properties and methods ... Applets suddenly started to look old and primitive. The W3C’s endorsement of Dynamic HTML finally set the tone for the new breed of sophisticated, dynamic web pages.

Oh dear!

The author does mention some advantages to Applets. I shall cite just a couple, relevant to me:

  • The JDK comes with many useful classes that are typically found only in a high-level class library.
  • Applets can communicate back to the web server for sending customized messages, uploading / downloading [data].

The shuffling function I use in my Applet. I'm sure that would not be available in JavaScript. And there are other fairly complex calculations I intend to build in, which I am sure would be better run in compiled code than in a script.

And Applets are supposed to communicate with a server, which is what I am trying to do.

Yet almost all the material at least on the top page of a web search is as old as the article I am citing today.

Comments

Unknown said…
Well somehow I got to read lots of articles on your blog. It’s amazing how interesting it is for me to visit you very often.

Selenium training in Chennai

Selenium training in Bangalore
December 27, 2018 at 9:36 PM
sathish said…
After reading this web site I am very satisfied simply because this site is providing comprehensive knowledge for you to audience.
Thank you to the perform as well as discuss anything incredibly important in my opinion. We loose time waiting for your next article writing in addition to I beg one to get back to pay a visit to our website in




Selenium training in bangalore
Selenium training in Chennai
Selenium training in Bangalore
Selenium training in Pune
Selenium Online training
January 27, 2019 at 10:31 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A few notes on JavaScript

I am one the 99% of the world who has long nursed the misconception that JavaScript has something to do with Java. And why not? The name sort of implies it. It was only after I searched without success on the Java Tutorial site for some mention of JavaScript that I stumbled across the knowledge that JavaScript was in fact developed by Netscape, under the name LiveScript. Armed with that knowledge, it is not surprising to find the best reference information on Mozilla site. According to Wikipedia , the nonsensical name choice had something to do with Netscape wanting to cash in on the popularity and cachet of Java, and Sun wanting support for Java technology in the then popular Netscape browser. For a while only the Netscape family of browsers supported JavaScript. Microsoft later produced what it calls JScript to run in its browser. JScript is similar but not identical to Javascript. According to Foldoc JavaScript runs a hundred times slower than C , and ten
Read more

Forum Comments on Java Applets

It is so long since I last posted on the once was Sun/Java now is Oracle developer forum my account seems to have been ditched. While I wait to have it resurrected I've done a little searching in the Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) forum using the search term "Applet". My first search, using the default 3 month period, yielded nothing. No one had posted anything about or even mentioned Applets in the last three months. So either they are very easy to use and work very well, so hardly anyone has any problems with them, or maybe ... not very many people use them at all. My stomach was beginning to churn a bit, when I extended the search period to the current year - and with good reason. Somebody, a little bit like me I think, had written a game in an applet, and wanted to record top scores in a database. He described his connection problem in this thread , and the first reply began: Doing JDBC calls from an Applet is such a bad idea that I am glad y
Read more

Creating a Custom Swing Component

Image
I always return to my blog when I'm stuck, and I'm stuck right now. I want to create a custom Swing component. Specifically, I want something like a JProgressBar , with the following changes: In place of a flat Foreground color, I want a rainbow spectrum, showing only the red range for low Values, and the whole spectrum for values close to the Maximum value; Instead of a rectangular box, I want the progress "bar" to take the shape of a normal, or Gaussian, distribution curve; I want progress to be displayed by the area under the curve, rather than by a simple linear scale along the x axis. It's not that there isn't stuff out there. I have five tabs open in my browser, specifically addressing the creation of custom components in Swing, as well as the source code for the JProgressBar . It is that, like everything to do with Java, it is bloody difficult to read. I shall begin from the horse's mouth as it were, with an article on the Java
Read more