Posted by mbstevens on 11/02/07 16:24

JWS wrote:
> mbstevens wrote:
>
>> Most Linuxes don't come with browsers' Java installed.
>> Are you sure it is installed? -- easy enough to do if it isn't.
>
> I am pretty sure:
>
> -- I installed Java 6 (a.k.a. 1.6) on my Linux system.

You also have to make sure that the browser knows how to reach it.

> -- I actually wrote the applet myself (on my system).
> -- It runs perfectly well on my system. But it does not print
> from Firefox on Linux (it does not print from Firefox when I
> boot the computer into Windows, either; so far it only prints
> from IE7 on Windows XP).
>
>> This is a reason you might think about whether an applet will
>> be usable to all your visitors. I stopped using them years ago.
>
> Yes, from Googling I got the impression that there is a general
> dislike of Java applets nowadays, among Web page creators. I do
> not quite understand why. Could you elaborate?

Actually, I ran across a microscope site a while back that had
an applet animating light paths that I thought was a good use.

But too many people have browsers that do not 'do' applets.

Most applets you see are misused -- for instance, for navigation,
cute animations of waves and such.

> What alternatives
> do you use for putting interactive programs on the Web?

Server side processing, or DHTML/Ajax _if_ you can make them
degrade gracefully. Flash/Java are still OK for some limited
uses.

> I am just
> a Java newbie (what you could call a "very very late adopter") but
> I was pretty impressed that my applet (which animates fairly
> complicated mathematical things)

That might be a good use...

> asks nothing more from the server
> than to serve up one file, of only 6003 bytes -- less than even a
> small .png, .gif, or .jpg picture, for instance.
>
> Regards, Jan

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