Java

Applet Examples | Java Caveats

Developed originally by Sun Microsystems, Java is a general purpose programming language. An applet is a program written in Java that can be included in another application such as HTML. Java applets are another very popular means of adding dynamic elements to Web pages. Whereas CGI programs (to be discussed later) operate on the server, Java applets are downloaded with the Web page to the browser. This means that you can add dynamic elements to your Web pages with Java applets even if you do not have the privileged access needed to install your custom-designed CGI scripts.

On the other hand, creating custom Java applets is a far from trivial task. Java is what computer programmers call an object oriented language. This gives it many powerful features, but the novice programmer will probably find it more difficult to learn than HTML, or even Perl or C.

Still it is possible to add applets to your pages without ever learning to program in Java at all. We'll look at an example of an applet in the next section and see how to put it on a Web page.