Java Applet question

good or bad to use?

[paulperoni]

Hi All,

Quick question,

Java applets, good or bad? i use a few on a website im developing but not use how they will impact on the public. can most browsers these days handle them? are there any reason why not to use them? I know they increase page loading time but apart from that?

thanks.

[Staffa]

I have one running to show the progress of an order on my niche site. I did it mainly to bring some "movement/action" to what would otherwise have been rather dull text.
It has a link to the no-applet version of the same page for visitors who have java disabled. On average about 12% of visitors to the original page end up on the static page.

[ukgimp]

Hi Paul

It depends really what you are doing with your applet. Some are very large and can slow a oage down significantly. Like the ones that make image appear to ripple and some teletype features.

I remember a while back someone telling me that as a rule of thumb have no more than 1 applet per page. These days I go for the none approach in favour of small page sizes etc.

That is just my preferece. Perhaps you could look at the extra page size when including your next applet and see what a difference it makes.

Personally I find it annoying when a page seems to have a large gap, which I know is the applet loading.

Cheers

[BlobFisk]

Is there an issue at the moment with Windows XP and the JVM? Do XP users now have to go and install this themselves, after some court case between SUN and Microsoft?

If this is true (and I could be open to egg on my face on this one :)), then XP users who haven't installed the JVM will not be able to see your applet (or any applet for that matter!).

Can anyone confirm/rubbish this?

[v_1_c]

From what Ive seen on the net its best not to use applets . There are still some people who dont trust java applets entierly and thus disable them , also applets tend to take awhile to load , even if they are relatively small as they still need to initiate and start and stop according to different situations .

If you do decide to go with java applets make sure you go for ones created in java 1.0 , the latest version is java 2 but not may people have upgraded their plugins yet . java 1.0 was the first one that was supported by Netscape 4.0 , IE 4 and Opera 3.6 or higher , natuarly . So be carefull when chosing which version .

As far as WinXP , I think its true that you have to go and download it from sun microsystems , however , when I was installing Opera 6 I was asked if I wanted to install the java plugin , so I think its natuarlly supported by some browsers .

At the end of the day , only use Java applets in controled situations ie. Company intranets , sites with a specific audience that have java enabled etc.

v1c

[Filipe]

I rarely recommend using applets (unless it's central to your site) as they generally don't contribute much to the page.

If you want active elements, I recommend small Flash elements (don't go overboard). Users will ultimately (usually) go to your site for the quality its content (or products, where eCommerce is concerned), so try to rely on that more than anything else.

[ppg]

MS removed the JVM (which you need to run applets) in XP originally, but they've put it back in with the new Service Pack 1 - also saying they're going to take it out again at some point in 2003. There's nothing to stop your users downloading it seperately (but I don't think its likely they will). To me, anything with potentially patchy support should be avoided.

In general I'd stay clear of client-side java. No-one wants to wait for your applet to download so if you're going to use them you'd better make them really teeny. The same is true for Flash IMHO, I'll use a little bit if my company demands animation (which they do sometimes) but I keep it as much to a minimum as I can.