Introduction

Content

Apply

Reflect

Extend

Advantages of applets

Applets are easy to distribute to any platform (via the use of Web browsers). The programmer does not have to maintain the program’s interaction with the GUI to the same extent as with applications — the browser handles many of the events such as window closing etc.

Despite the limitations of applets, applet programming is quite popular because it makes software very easy to distribute using a Web browser. The end user does not have to set anything up: merely viewing a Web page is sufficient (in principle).

Moreover, the Web browser provides an environment in which the applet can run. The programmer does not have to worry about how the user starts and stops it, or changes the size of its screen area.

For some distributed programming applications (for example where the data the user works on is not held on his or her own computer, but at a remote site) applet programming can be very effective. For example, a number of banks are providing on-line access for their customers based on Java applets. Since all the user’s data is held by the bank’s central computers, there is no need for data to be read or written from the user’s own computer. So this particular limitation of applets does not present a problem.

So when writing a Java program for distribution, the developers must make a decision to support an applet or a stand-alone application. The creation of stand-alone applications presents no particular problem for the Java programmer, as we shall see.

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