Ming the Applet

Can the Applet take on Flash and even kill it? Or will it become like Ming the Merciless, forever trying and failing ?

I must say I like the way things are going for the applet people. I became convinced this morning when I saw this posting in Joshua Marinacci's Blog about replacing the applet loading screen. It seems applets may soon be the John Travolta of the browser world, especially with java 6 update 10 coming real soon now.

When you add JavaFX to all this then applets are well and truly going up against flash in the browser space. But I have to ask the question : what is flash being used for that we want applets to do ?

1. Show annoying adverts with mosquito noises that turn users away from the page before they've read anything
2. Make the next StrongBad
3. Produce web games that help you not work on a Friday afternoon

I think the indie gamers will take care of number 3 and we're bound to see applet games making a comeback. I don't think we're going to see applet cartoons anytime soon, and I hope most java developers would rather gouge out their eyes than work on an irritating applet add that asked you to punch a gorilla or something.

I think (and hope) we see something new - desktop like apps within a browser. And, if I may be so bold, I'd like to coin a new term here and call them WebTop applications. Something richer than html/css/javascript stack, more consistant than flash and stabler than.... well applets as they used to be.

Go applets go !




On a side note, I think I should fess up and publicly recant my doubts about JavaFX that I've expressed to friends and colleagues . I keep seeing new posts, new articles and the buzz is building. It think JavaFX is going to make it and Sun isn't going to abandon it next Java One. I even saw a "Whats wrong this JavaFX feature" article yesterday, a sure sign of critical mass in developer mindshare.