The Last Tiny Thing To Do Before Applets Take Off Again 📎
The support for applets in Java 6 SE update 10 is amazing. The Mozilla 3.0 plugin was totally rewritten, the start-time was drastically improved (1-2 seconds on my machine). You can even deploy WebStart applications as applet now. Applets can be dragged from the browser and even installed as WebStart (this functionality is experimental). WebStart applications can be deployed as applets as well. I'm experimenting with applets right now, and I'm really impressed. Applets are fully configurable (with -Xmx as well), run out-of-process (so they do not block the browser) and can interact with JavaScript.
The only thing, which has to happen is the RENAMING of applets to something else, ...my first suggestion is: "richlets".