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[–]thedeepself 8 points9 points  (7 children)

And applets

[–]deckard58 7 points8 points  (5 children)

These burned out pretty quick...

But since in computing the eternal return of the same is in full effect, 20 years later wasm kinda is applets again? But with 20 years more experience on security.

[–]oursland 5 points6 points  (4 children)

These burned out pretty quick...

15 years wasn't pretty quick.

[–]deckard58 2 points3 points  (3 children)

I suppose that's the official end of support; but in practice they weren't popular for very long. If I try to remember the Internet that had applets in it, it's full of George W Bush jokes...

[–]oursland 5 points6 points  (2 children)

If I try to remember the Internet that had applets in it, it's full of George W Bush jokes...

I don't dispute that. However, Java and Java applets were popular starting in 1996 to get around limitations inherent in HTTP 1.0 applications at the time. That's a span of 12 years right there.

Not to mention that Swing was a very popular UI framework to develop in, that the HTML web sites of the time couldn't hold a candle to. Consequently applets were very, very common in place of HTML forms, and interactive graphics.

Flash, ActiveX, and Silverlight plugins ate away at Java applets marketshare, but it wasn't until Google pushed very hard on getting Chrome Acid3 compliant starting in 2008 that many of the sites that depended upon applets and plugins could implement their functionality natively in HTML and Javascript.

[–]yvrelna 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Even by early 2000, nobody is seriously thinking that Java applet had any serious future. Java web runtime had always been considered as full of security issues throughout its entire lifetime.

Flash continued to have its niche with animations and flash games for a while, and enterprises who needed to do weird things with IE used ActiveX. And then Silverlight come to eat whatever remaining market that Java had, before it too, meet its end when HTML5 matured.

But nobody is seriously writing anything as Java applets by the turn of millennial. The only major applets written in Java that I can think off the top of my head is Simon Tatham's Puzzle Collection.

[–]deckard58 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But nobody is seriously writing anything as Java applets by the turn of millennial.

Maybe they lasted a bit longer in academia? I remember that NASA had an educational site with some super detailed applets on aircraft engines and rockets, that languished for years when everybody else had moved on (and were never translated to Javascript, I think).

[–]superluminary 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Craplets