Are java applets a bad choice for new web content?

Question

I work for a government agency that provides a lot of technical information through our website. Web development is not really our strong suit, but we are passing by. A lot of our current content is delivered through Java applets. Recently, we have received feedback from users that they cannot access various bits of the site because their browsers (primarily Safari and Firefox) have disabled Java due to security issues. Of course, this can be fixed in both cases by updating and / or changing preferences, but still there is a barrier that may be too high for non-specialized users.

So my question is what is the likely future for Java applets? Is this approach more likely, and the proportion of browser configurations that cannot / will not start them increase? As I mentioned, my organization (and I) are not experts in the field of web development, so we do not have a good idea of ​​the trends. If new content needs to be written in something other than Java applets (our newly developed content uses JavaScript instead). Should we plan to convert applets in response to diminishing support?

Answer 1

The current trend is quite clearly aimed at less support for Java applets in client browsers. It has never worked very well, and now there are better ways to present dynamic information on websites.

Creating a new website today, based on a Java applet for content delivery, would be a poor technology choice.

Answer 2

Using a Java applet to deliver content, as indicated, is a really poor technology choice. Modern browsers are capable of doing almost everything applets can offer. Consequently, the use of applets has become redundant these days.

Answer 3

Firefox and Chrome both click on JavaScript and their own client and disable Java for political reasons, not security reasons. Where there is a short period of time, when some specific versions of Java Plugin, where there is a security problem. Apple blocked these versions, while FF and Chrome used it as an excuse to completely disable it.

Which technology is best for your use. If development time is the most important factor, I would say that applets using the Swing environment are the way to go. You can use the Swing constructor in Netbeans to quickly create a GUI: s. In addition, the performance of the Swing-based GUI is superior to the performance of Flash or HTML + JavaScript.

But keep in mind that browser support will be limited, users will receive security issues, etc. However, if the data you are viewing is interesting enough for the user, it does not matter.

If I need to create a website to run that should work well in all browsers, fit into search engines, etc. Applets will be a dead end.

If I need to develop a complex website that presents data that is already in demand from an existing user base, I would go for Java applets.

As a third option, you can do both. Make a simplified website using HTML + JavaScript and a more advanced version of the applet using Swing. This would be a viable option even for sites that should be attractive to new users, where some materials will be available for search engines, and the first page will work in all browsers.