Applets return to the stage

It sounds almost unbelievable, but Sun is about to revive the corpse known as applets. A relic of the past, a reject, a black sheep, call the technology whatever you like, but Sun has to bring it back. The reason for the revival is the introduction of JavaFX. The web version of JavaFX needs a host container inside the browser, and applets, despite their problems, are the only option.

Applets have a whole range of problems. The two most pressing are startup speed and the requirement to have a JRE installed. I see a third problem as more social: applets have never been trusted the way Flash, for example, has. Flash also had to solve the problem of needing an installed container, and it seems it was enough to cut the installer down to under 3 MB.

The size of the JRE itself affects how quickly it starts, so Sun is preparing a so-called Consumer JRE. It will be smaller, with more functionality available as modules. This JRE should be available early next year. Sun has been working on the idea for some time under the name Java Kernel or Java Browser Edition (it’s the same project). See Java 7 — Java kernel, JRuby.

For applet deployment, the forthcoming Java Module Systemis also worth mentioning. Installation itself, including detecting the JRE on the client, should be handled by a solution similar to Auto-Install — Another step toward a more usable Java desktop.

The technology for solving the most pressing applet problems is there. The question is whether the social problem can be solved, meaning that applets aren’t seen as a trustworthy technology. Technical progress is a small first step toward getting users to see them differently.

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