3 ms·

Is the horribleness of applets intrinsic in the concept of a common target?

• matt4077 9y ago
  It might be, because "common target" implies a lack of competition.
• duskwuff 9y ago
  IMO: No. It was more of an implementation issue. When Java applets were first implemented, the web platform was still extremely limited -- HTML was still at version 2.0, CSS and the DOM didn't exist yet, and Javascript was still very new. So it made some sense, at that point, to have Java applets exist in their own "world", and not interact with other web content. A modern Java applet environment would probably look very different. More of a focus on providing a bridge to the browser's DOM, less of a focus on building UIs using native Java frameworks (like AWT or Swing).
• acdha 9y ago
  It's definitely a challenge trying to balance portability with support for platform specific features but I'd be a little hesitant to draw general conclusions from the two big examples since both Adobe and Sun were notoriously negligent platform maintainers addicted to haring off after some shiny whim before fixing what they had already built. Even simple things like if Sun cared about non-server performance in the 90s or if either of them had figured out how to properly package and ship updated before the 2010s could have improved their reputation immensely.