In this article we take a look at the java applet technology used to deliver programs over the web. The Next-Generation Java Plug-in Technology does run applets in a different, more reliable and more efficient than the previous one. This java plug-in has the following advantages: Improved reliability, improved user experience, applets launch in the background, built-in JNLP support, Per-applet command line arguments, heap size, Java 2D API acceleration options, improved Java/JavaScript programming language integration etc.
This new version of Java Plug-in does offer a completely new architecture. This plug-in gives powerful new capability to applets in the browser, at the same time improving the overall functionality and reliability of the applets in a backward-compatible manner. The most notable new feature of the new version of Java Plug-in is its built-in support for launching applets from the JNLP files. When one uses the JNLP file format as the applet descriptor does allow applets to immediately reuse JNLP extensions that were previously written for Java Web Start applications. This significantly does expand the capabilities of applets in numerous other ways.
With the new java plug-in, applets no longer execute in a JVM in the web browser. Instead, a separate JVM machine process is launched that executes the applets. By default, only one JVM machine is launched, but one has the opportunity to launch more than one JVM, and one gets to support per-applet command-line arguments, so he can affect heap size or even other requests. The new java plug-in provides the following: access to more advanced JNLP extensions that were previously available to Java Web Start software applications only, access to the JNLP APIs from the applets, Persistent service, control over heap size, JRE version selection, command-line arguments, and automatic-download. One gets the same capabilities as in Java Web Start software for applications.
In conclusion, we can say that the next-generation Java plug-in is a very wonderful tool, and any java developer can attest to this. The introduction of the JNLP support in the Java Plug-in does open up numerous new possibilities for applet deployment. It also does represent a large step forward in the unification of the deployment of Java content. This is both in and out of the web browser. Java Applets have truly come a long way since the time of their inception, and at the moment with the JNLP support, they are much faster and more customizable than ever before.