Applets Are Officially Gone, but Java in the Browser Is Better

Summary

Applets Are Officially Gone, But Java In The Browser Is Better Than Ever Summary Applets are officially, completely removed from Java 26, coming in March of 2026. This brings to an official end the era of applets, which began in 1996. However, for years it has been possible to build modern, interactive web pages in Java without needing applets or plugins. TeaVM provides fast, performant, and lightweight tooling to transpile Java to run natively in the browser. And for a full front-end toolkit with templates, routing, components, and more, Flavour lets you build your modern single-page app using 100% Java. Applet History Applets were first supported in Java 1.0 in 1996. Back then the web was mostly static text, with only the blink or marquee tags (and animated GIFs) to provide dynamic elements without a server round-trip. Applets allowed Java code to provide full interactivity, whether it was a full AWT/Swing GUI, or a Panel/JPanel on which a full Java2D-rendered scene could be built. Java developers made games, 3D molecule renderings, business applications, and more. While download speeds and processor speeds in the late 90's placed some limits on what could be done, the creativity shown was remarkable. And for developers, the deployment model for their code was very enticing: post your applet on a web page, and anyone on the planet could run it instantly, as long as they had the Java plug-in installed (which, at the time, was very likely). In the 2000's, politics interfered and browser vendors removed plug-in support, instead preferring their own walled gardens and restricted sandboxes, which often lag behind industry standards for years. This undid years of innovation and broke large parts of the internet that depended on plug-ins. TeaVM TeaVM came to the rescue in 2013, giving Java developers a fast, efficient way to use Java code to drive the browser. With short build times, small app sizes, and batteries-included build tooling, TeaVM was a revolution in develop...