November 6th, 2007

Recently I took a test where I had to write a Java Applet. I realized something while I was writing it. Java Applets are obsolete and deprecated. Anything they can do, faster newer technologies can do better. Lets look at the two main purposes of a Java Applet: animation and robust GUI development.
In terms of animation Applets fall short… way short. Writing a program to animate something is as painful as drawing a picture with LOGO. Applets lack the ability to draw and animate as effectively as alternatives like flash and silverlight. Flash gives the user simple easy ways to import media or draw vector (or raster) images and animate them using keyframes. Need advanced animation or programatic animation? Flash actionscript has you covered. It can animate as well as provide an event driven program.
Java Applets however have none of this. Each frame must be drawn programatically and requires a blanking in between. While this isn’t a huge inconvenience it shows Java applets are not intended to be powerful animation tools.
Additionally Java applets are supposed to provide a robust GUI experience. In actuality Java applets provide for a clunky slow loading experience frequently resulting in a large ominous gray box in the center of a browser.
When Java originated (early 90’s) applets were a very powerful tool allowing for robust GUI development. Java applets were leaps and bounds ahead of any early version HTML controls. This utility however diminished as HTML became less of a presentation markup and more of an interaction markup. My realization that java applets are obsolete was concreted by AJAX, asynchronous Javascript and XML. This technology fixed the primary problem still plaguing HTML: The HTTP protocol.
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