A Java applet is a small application written in the Java programming language or another language that compiles to Java bytecode. It is designed to be embedded within an HTML page and executed within a web browser, functioning at the client side[1][2][5][8]. Applets were introduced with the first version of Java in 1995 and were commonly used to provide interactive features to web applications that HTML alone could not offer, such as capturing mouse input, displaying animations, and interactive graphical content[2].
Java applets run in a Java virtual machine (JVM), which is a separate process from the web browser itself. This allows applets to appear within a web page or in a new application window, depending on how they are called[2]. They are platform-independent, meaning they can run on various operating systems including Windows, macOS, and Linux, provided the system has a JVM installed[2][5].
However, the use of Java applets has significantly declined. Major web browsers began phasing out support for the underlying technology needed to run applets around 2013, and by 2015-2017, applets were largely unsupported[2][8]. This decline was due to several factors, including security concerns and the rise of competing technologies like JavaScript and HTML5, which offer similar functionalities without requiring additional plugins ...
