I agree somewhat with btip. The UI features of Java were not only ugly, but, until 6.0, slow. This is one of the reasons Eclipse uses SWT rather than native Swi

I agree somewhat with btip. The UI features of Java were not only ugly, but, until 6.0, slow. This is one of the reasons Eclipse uses SWT rather than native Swing. 6 brought with it a much faster UI experience. Unfortunately that happened after the transition of apps from the desktop to the web. So you had slow applet downloads vs Flash on the client. You also had compatibility issues that were more involved than Flash. Finally, other cross platform frame works like Qt came along. Now you'd get closer native appearance with languages other than Java. As a result of the confluence of events and changes Java became relegated to server or phone side.