| Applets can implement arbitrary interaction dynamics based on mouse/keyboard input and multimedia (graphics, sound) output. |
| Typically, an applet will download a little simulation, mouse tracking or drawing/painting software and the interaction with the user will be handled by the Java interpreter, running at the client side. The performance and response time is therefore much higher than in client-server interaction models. |
| Technical implementation of HotJava GUI is achieved in terms of the Abstract Windowing Toolkit which offers common, platform-independent abstraction of a generic window server (which is implemented in terms of X/UNIX, Windows/PC and Macintosh models on the individual platforms) |
| At the moment, (alpha) Java is supported on Sun Solaris and WindowsNT platforms. Other ports are in progress. |