Mar 16
I had to blink a couple of times when I saw Rickards recent posting, Why applets are great.
I thought I was going to hear a gem about AOP…. bu this? :)
I actually agree in many ways. Applets themselves don’t “suck” as many people still exclaim.
My thoughts on applets are:
- When they first came out it was annoying seeing the mouseover applets on everyones site
- They were deathly slow at first
- Working around browser issues is a real PITA
- I have seen some great uses of applets. They have a place, just not right for every job (like all technology)
- There are many cases where it makes more sense to use Java Web Start than applets
- As Rickard mentions, there are cases where it makes more sense to use applets than Web Start!
- Swing isn’t evil either
- Applet development is getting better and better (as bandwidth increases, caching is better, java support will hopefully get better, etc etc)
Kudos to Rickard for being pragmatic about a technology, and not falling for “this sucks” syndrome. We have a toolbox, and now and then it makes sense to bring out toolks like Applets and even EJB!
