4 ms·

Amusingly, there were two different ways of running Java in the browser when it came out in the late 90s. One was Applet style where Java takes over a part of t

Amusingly, there were two different ways of running Java in the browser when it came out in the late 90s. One was Applet style where Java takes over a part of the canvas of the page and has to implement everything, like Flash or ActiveX. The other was headless and you had access to the DOM. Why no one built interesting applications with the latter is beyond me. https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/applet/manipulatingDOMFromApplet.html https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/applet/ma... Now we are doing it all over again with WASM when it already existed and just wasn't used.

yyyk 3y ago
>The other was headless and you had access to the DOM. Why no one built interesting applications with the latter is beyond me. Frameworks, HTML5 or even DHTML/AJAX didn't exist at the time. If you were already paying the cost of invoking Java/Flash/ActiveX, why would you access the DOM and pay extra rendering price - for an interface suited for documents, not applications?
- spullara 3y ago
  You could have built DHTML/AJAX though just powered by Java code. SPAs could have been built then. Edit: Repliers live in an alternate reality where good applets were made and HTML didn't win.
  - regularfry 3y ago
    Am I imagining it, or did someone do exactly that but with an invisible Flash component at one point?
  - yyyk 3y ago
    The idiomatic and library-supported way to make a Java web application was to make a richer interface using Java itself. Why reinvent the wheel to make a HTML interface, only to incur a performance penalty? EDIT: Java applets failed because of Java's poor integration and (at the time) performance and sandbox security. That had little to do with the DOM interface. Using that would have made things worse.
    - kaba0 3y ago
      Poor integration was also just politics, so nothing inherent in java
  - int_19h 3y ago
    But, again, why would you do it in DHTML if you could do it in Swing, which was then (and arguably still is) better suited to apps?
  - peterashford 3y ago
    There were good applets made

yyyk 3y ago

>The other was headless and you had access to the DOM. Why no one built interesting applications with the latter is beyond me. Frameworks, HTML5 or even DHTML/AJAX didn't exist at the time. If you were already paying the cost of invoking Java/Flash/ActiveX, why would you access the DOM and pay extra rendering price - for an interface suited for documents, not applications?

spullara 3y ago
You could have built DHTML/AJAX though just powered by Java code. SPAs could have been built then. Edit: Repliers live in an alternate reality where good applets were made and HTML didn't win.
- regularfry 3y ago
  Am I imagining it, or did someone do exactly that but with an invisible Flash component at one point?
- yyyk 3y ago
  The idiomatic and library-supported way to make a Java web application was to make a richer interface using Java itself. Why reinvent the wheel to make a HTML interface, only to incur a performance penalty? EDIT: Java applets failed because of Java's poor integration and (at the time) performance and sandbox security. That had little to do with the DOM interface. Using that would have made things worse.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    Poor integration was also just politics, so nothing inherent in java
- int_19h 3y ago
  But, again, why would you do it in DHTML if you could do it in Swing, which was then (and arguably still is) better suited to apps?
- peterashford 3y ago
  There were good applets made