Applets Are Officially Going, But Java In the Browser Is Better Than Ever

"The entire java.applet package has been removed from JDK 26, which will release in March 2026," notes Inside Java. But long-time Slashdot reader AirHog links to this blog post reminding us that"Applets Are Officially Gone, But Java In The Browser Is Better Than Ever."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... TeaVM, at its heart, transpiles Java code into JavaScript (or, these days, WASM). However, in order for Java code to be useful for web apps, much more is required, and TeaVM delivers. It includes a minifier, to shrink the generated code and obfuscate the intent, to complicate reverse-engineering. It has a tree-shaker to eliminate unused methods and classes, keeping your app download compact. It packages your code into a single file for easy distribution and inclusion in your HTML page. It also includes wrappers for all popular browser APIs, so you can invoke them from your Java code easily, with full IDE assistance and auto-correct. The blog post also touts Flavour, an open-sourceframework "for coding, packaging, and optimizing single-page apps implemented in Java... a full front-end toolkit with templates, routing, components, and more" to "build your modern single-page app using 100% Java."

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