I 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

I 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.