The Applets: Powerful RIA Applications in the Web Browser
The applets appeared along with the Java programming language in the middle of the last decade of the twentieth century. The applets came with the promise of a rich Internet application. Some say the Java programming language became popular because of the applets, but we leave that for others to debate.
Comparing the applet to the rich Internet application (RIA) environments already popular such as Flex and Flash, Silverlight and Ajax is common and understandable. Many applets in use are of similar nature as those RIA, but that might change now that many critical issues of the past are getting a fix.
The applet already has an upper hand compared to many other RIAs with the browser plugin. An Applet is almost a full featured application just like any other Java application and that power resides in most of today's browsers. We have seen applets that show satellite images faster and of higher quality than today's Ajax powered maps. We have seen applets with data grids that can manipulate and sort data faster than most Web browser scripting and programming languages. These are two areas where the applet excels.
Related data:
On the Web sites, we have studied, only 0.38% included applets while 20.12% had HTML objects of other types. Obviously, there is a lot of catch up to do for the applet.