Everybody knows the drawbacks of Java Applets. Long loading times, browser freezing, and stability problems. That fact does not make java applet popular1. Most of those problems lie in the quality of the java browser plug-in itself, which was not really good and was not improved over a longer time.

Sun has ground up rewritten the browser java Plug-in. Following was done in this rebuild.

  • Improved scripting support (So javascript integration is better)
  • Improved reliability
  • Supports more powerful applets (applets can ask for more memory)
  • Better windows vista support (signed applets)
  • Enterprise features (run one applet in a particular JRE version)

The last point sounds very interesting to me. Earlier I had much to do with applets, developing them for a particular (old) java version, declared as only one supported corporate standard, but using in development the newest version. So it was not always a comfortable thing.

We will see what that new development brings…

  1. Compare with Google Trends ↩︎