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IMHO, the history was different. Java applets were initially secure in a sandbox and faster than what was possible with the "javascript" of that era. Applets h
by reacweb 10y ago
IMHO, the history was different. Java applets were initially secure in a sandbox and faster than what was possible with the "javascript" of that era.
Applets have become slow to start many years latter when bloated "enterprise" applications have been produced in abusive ways.
The security of applets has started to deteriorate a bit slightly before the death of Sun. It has become a security hell only since it is in the hands of Oracle.
- e98cuenc 10y agoThe startup time was horrible. The speed, once it was running, was good, but the startup time made it completely unusable on the web. The ugly default UIs in Java did not help. I did my fair share of applets back in the day, starting with the very first public versions and have very vivid memories of the loading screen :)
- whatusername 10y agoI always wonder -- if Sun had forced people to build their own loading screen UI per applet -- how the perception of Java (and Java Applets) would be different.
- OOPMan 10y agoIt's worth remembering that Applets were active at a time when the Internet, as a whole, was a lot slower. Although yeah, even with our newfangled fibre connections applets are still pretty bloated.
- pookeh 10y agoYou should also take into account that internet speeds of that era were not as great. Today, we download multiple megabytes of javascript. Back then downloading the same multiple megabytes of java was slow because of network. At least that was the case for me...
- 72deluxe 10y agoI recall loading webpages in IE where the browser would completely stop for 30 seconds while the JVM fired up. JavaScript at the time was mainly used for snow flakes on the web page or annoying mouse trails on the web page, as I recall. Oh, and maybe rollovers. I remember Microsoft pushing DHTML and seeing IE4 as a leap forward compared to IE3 but I do recall Java being slow. And slow.