Hi Oracle,
We’ve got a bit of problem: applets.
You see, almost every recent security vulnerability and recent hack – Facebook, Apple, NYT – has been because of your support for applets.
Just to name a few, there’s CVE-2012-3213,CVE-2012-3342,CVE-2013-0351,CVE-2013-0409,CVE-2013-0419,CVE-2013-0423,CVE-2013-0424,CVE-2013-0425,CVE-2013-0426,CVE-2013-0427,CVE-2013-0428,CVE-2013-0429,CVE-2013-0432,CVE-2013-043,CVE-2013-0434,CVE-2013-0435,CVE-2013-0438,CVE-2013-0440,CVE-2013-0441,CVE-2013-0442,CVE-2013-0443,CVE-2013-0445,CVE-2013-0450,CVE-2013-1473,CVE-2013-1475,CVE-2013-1476,CVE-2013-1478,CVE-2013-1480,CVE-2013-1481,CVE-2013-1486,CVE-2013-1487,CVE-2013-1488.
I’ve been developing in Java for many years and I can attest that nobody uses applets anymore. It’s old outdated technology that needs to go away. It’s too heavy of a platform to deliver web applications. The future of web technology is light weight. The future is HTML5, Javascript, and CSS3.
We all make mistakes and nobody is going to blame you (except maybe the malware authors) for getting rid of applets.
Do it! Axe it!
Sincerely,
Security Enthusiast and Java Developer
Dustin Schultz
Java applets are necessary for folder uploads. Right now, only 1 browser supports folder uploads, and that’s Google Chrome. All others allow single or multi-file uploads, but not folders. This is a HUGE problem for some medical and document-management use cases. Until folder uploads work natively in other browsers (IE7+, FF, Safari), applets are not only necessary, but essential
Yes, this is somewhat unfortunate and someone should really light a fire under the HTML5 implementors. However, I wouldn’t call it essential since you can archive/zip/tar a bunch of files and upload them all at once and do the processing server side.
You can, but an 80 year old w/ a CD full of medical images probably won’t be able to.
These applets sometimes serve as a crucial way for elderly to communicate complex data. If you ask them to be able to use their computer for more than putting in a CD and pressing a button, success rates will dwindle into nothingness.
It’s all well and good to say applets suck from the consumer web point of view, but, they serve a huge purpose in non-consumer based use cases, like medical imaging.
Look, I don’t disagree with you that Java applets stink. But like Winston Churchill said about democracy, it is the worst form of functionality except all the others that have been tried.
Hah, great quote! This sounds like a great business opportunity to improve the process!
working on it
AWT applets were ugly as sin. The browser plugin was woefully underinvested in (compatibility and far worse – security) and Flash became the leading rich-client browser technology until phones and tablets became dominant client devices for the web.
The applet security perma-snafu has turned the IT press against Java but I think with JavaFX and the modular JVM Oracle has one last throw of the dice in pushing Java as a rich client for the web.