When Java was introduced in 1994, it became an overnight success largely because of Netscape Navigator: Navigator put the Java interpreter on millions of computers. Wanting to capitalize on the new, suddenly pervasive Java platform, thousands of developers learned the Java language as quickly as possible, anxious to write applets for a hungry audience enthralled with the Internet.
When Java was introduced in 1994, it became an overnight success largely because of Netscape Navigator: Navigator put the Java interpreter on millions of computers. Wanting to capitalize on the new, suddenly pervasive Java platform, thousands of developers learned the Java language as quickly as possible, anxious to write applets for a hungry audience enthralled with the Internet.
Today, applets are still used for games, chat, and various thin-client applications, but few people learn Java to write applets. Instead, the hot spots of Java programming are servlets, application servers, and open source class libraries. In the web browser, applets have been eclipsed by Macromedia’s Flash, server-side web applications, and other alternatives.
But just as it appeared that applets were becoming passÉ, cellular phones, personal digital assistants, and other devices on the wireless Web have made applets relevant again. And few Java developers are better poised to code for those resource-limited environments than Karl Hörnell, one of the most experienced Java applet developers on the planet. H¨rnell, who distributes his work from his web site at http://www.javaonthebrain.com, has been writing Java applets and publishing source code and programming advice since 1996.
At the moment, H¨rnell offers 35 games and other applets on his web site. Most were written for a variety of web browsers with the goal of “write once, run everywhere,” even though he describes that effort as “a hopeless situation.”
His newer work has been written to run on mobile environments such…
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