Applets Today
Java originally became famous as the language that brought Web pages to life through applets.
Since then, other technologies for making Web pages interactive have been widely adopted.
For various commercial and technical reasons applets have decreased in popularity on the Internet. The virtual machines in Web browsers have not kept step with developments in the rest of the Java world.
Applets may still have a future in the Intranet context, where companies can control versions of browser and Java development software deployed. But on the Internet, where many incompatible versions abound, the future of traditional applets is somewhat unclear.