The applet model had/has major issues: * Takes way too long to load the JVM. Deal-breaker for many sites. * Horrible (AWT) and complicated (Swing) UI toolkits

The applet model had/has major issues: * Takes way too long to load the JVM. Deal-breaker for many sites. * Horrible (AWT) and complicated (Swing) UI toolkits that ignored any look-and-feel parity with the rest of the web site or even the web browser itself. * The environment is controlled by Oracle. I don't think they're looking to compete with JS, Flash and Silverlight. Thus web applets (except for niche internal apps) are dead, RIP.