Hour 17. Creating Interactive Web Programs

What You’ll Learn in This Hour:

• Stopping and starting an applet

• Putting an applet on a web page

• Customizing an applet with parameters on a web page

• Displaying web pages in an application

Java has become successful as a general-purpose language that runs on many distinct platforms, including cell phones, web servers, and Internet appliances. When the language was introduced in the mid-1990s, it was the first programming language that could run inside a web browser.

Applets are Java programs designed to run as part of a web page. When a Java applet is encountered on a page, it is downloaded to the user’s computer and begins running.

Programming applets is different than creating applications with the language. Because applets must be downloaded from a page each time they are run, they’re smaller than most applications to reduce download time. Also, because applets run on the computer of the person using the applet, they have security restrictions in place to prevent malicious or damaging code from being run.