Clearly, versioning is very important, and it’s good that Sun seems to be addressing this. We might have to agree to disagree that it’s the No. 1 reason why applets failed though….

By the way, I’m seeing increasing numbers of problems with Flash e.g. causing browser crashes in particular browsers; the Flash software simply not running in the browser or locking up etc.

much as I like applets I think that you missed the major reason why the failed: version incompatibility. As soon as Java 1.1 came out we started to see the issues. Microsoft didn’t make it any easier with thir JVM, but Sun nver fully addressed the issue.

The latest Java plug in is much better and WebStart isn’t too bad but Sun have always fallen short in addressing that final 20 percent of how their technology performs in the real world. Macromedia on the other hand have got it right. How many times do you come across Flash incompatibility issues?

I’ve seen so many instances of applets configured to use a specific JVM version even though it may work on another version. Developers should (but don’t) compile their code for the earliest version of the JVM possible (see the “-target” flag!). Often Java is packaged with commercial Java applications just to ensure that the correct version is used.

Worse still, when the Java decides that an update is required / available (even for a point release) it installs a completely new Java environment (so you end up with jre_1_5_0, jre_1_5_1, jre_1_5_2, jre_1_5_3, etc. which are all 100Mb in side, just to cater for apps which might have a dependency on a specific bug in a specific point release).

For me, version is what lets Java down in terms of running applets. For server side apps this is a non issue which is why Java has prospered there.

Dominic Cioccarelli.

See:

http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2007/12/12/some-new-consumer-java-technologies-to-watch/

Interesting and timely post. You’re spot on with your points. The main difference I see with Silverlight, Flash, and Java, is that the first two are much ‘lighter’ compared to Java in the browser.
On Windows, when I reach a page with an applet, my hard drive starts whirring, the system becomes less responsive, and I see the JVM icon appear in the tray. I usually think to myself “oh no, this will take a while.”

Daniel