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 i

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.