Thursday 25 December 2008

www.mojang.com/notch/j4k/l4kd/

Left 4k Dead is an applet game written for a Java 4k coding challenge - it is inspired by the Left 4 Dead arcade game, but is implemented as a Java applet, in just 4k, which is a hell of an achievement. It's actually good fun to play.

http://www.mojang.com/notch/j4k/l4kd/

Sunday 23 November 2008

turbulence.org/spotlight/thinking

The Thinking Machine is a Processing based applet that will give you a good game of chess, but the cool thing is that while it is thinking about its next move it shows you the potential moves that it is considering, using coloured lines.

http://www.turbulence.org/spotlight/thinking/

http://www.processing.org/

Thanks to Rex Guo for the tip.

Sunday 9 November 2008

metamolecular.com/chemwriter

This is an applet that allows you to design chemical structures in a WYSIWYG editor. The editor supports undo/redo, importing and exporting of diagrams and it can be controlled by JavaScript. I know nothing about chemistry, but the diagrams look convincing to me :-)

http://metamolecular.com/chemwriter/

Sunday 2 November 2008

allstarpuzzles.com

This site has a collection of pen and paper puzzles, such as anagrams, Sudoku, and spot the difference (pictured), all implemented as Java applets.

http://allstarpuzzles.com/

Tuesday 21 October 2008

www.interactivepulp.com/pulpcore/

PulpCore is a really impressive framework for creating Java applet games that use smooth and rich 2D animations. It's open source too. Try the Milpa game demo, I had to double check that it was really using Java, not Flash.

http://code.google.com/p/pulpcore/

http://www.interactivepulp.com/pulpcore/

Sunday 19 October 2008

russells.freeshell.org/enigma/

This applet simulates the operation of the Enigma machine, used by Nazi Germany in WWII for encrypting communications. Source code is also available.

http://russells.freeshell.org/enigma/

Wednesday 15 October 2008

www.nobleavatar.com

The Noble Avatar maker is an applet that allows you to create an avatar character and then export it to a PNG file for use in forums, games, IM applications etc. It apparently has over 15 trillion combinations of features, although I still couldn't get one to look much like me -:-)

http://www.nobleavatar.com/

Thursday 9 October 2008

javaboutique.internet.com/SpaceFlight/

The SpaceFlight applet simulates flying through space - you change direction by moving the mouse over the applet. It's a lot more impressive than that sounds, honestly.

http://javaboutique.internet.com/SpaceFlight/

Monday 6 October 2008

mmcelhaney.blogspot.com/2008/10/iron-man-applet.html

This is a spinning cube, displaying a different image from the Iron Man movie on each side. Clicking on it stops it spinning, and moving the mouse around it changes the speed and direction of its rotation.

http://mmcelhaney.blogspot.com/2008/10/iron-man-applet.html

Wednesday 3 September 2008

www.jigzone.com

An online jigsaw puzzle game, which lets you solve jigsaws of between 6 and 240+ pieces.

Tuesday 26 August 2008

http://java.freenode.net/index.php

An Open Source IRC chat applet that you can embed in your own website.


http://java.freenode.net/index.php?go=1

Thursday 24 July 2008

bfo.co.uk/products/pdf/viewer.jsp

This is an applet version of the pure Java PDF viewer component offered by BFO. It uses a signed applet, so once trusted it can open files from your local machine and display them inside the applet, including support for multi page navigation, zooming, JavaScript and document signatures.

http://bfo.co.uk/products/pdf/viewer.jsp

[Disclaimer: I've just started work at BFO ;-)]

Monday 30 June 2008

www.falstad.com/circuit

This is an electronic circuit simulator - you can modify and add components like switches, transformers and logic gates and see how they behave in the circuit.

If I was more of an electronics geek I'm sure I could describe this in much more detail, but it's still fun to play around with, even when you have no idea what you're doing.

www.falstad.com/circuit/

Sunday 29 June 2008

www.wordle.net

I originally see this via lifehacker.com.

I've seen word clouds popping up in lots of different locations, this one is a Java Applet based versions.





http://wordle.net/

Thursday 26 June 2008

www-jpc.physics.ox.ac.uk

JPC is an x86 PC emulator written as a Java applet. It's quite an impressive thing, having basically the same machine I had when I was growing up now running inside a web page. Plus, being able to play Prince of Persia doesn't hurt either...

http://www-jpc.physics.ox.ac.uk/

Wednesday 25 June 2008

www.sferyx.com/htmleditorapplet/

An HTML editor applet, the JSyndrome applet is a full WYSIWG HTML editor that provides sophisticated editing and previewing of HTML documents and integrates with websites and Content Management Systems.

www.sferyx.com/htmleditorapplet/

Thursday 19 June 2008

http://www.faceofthefuture.org.uk/

An applet from the University of St. Andrews that allows you to upload an image of someone's face and then perform one of many possible transformations to it, such as 'Manga Cartoon', 'Baby', 'Drunk' and 'Apeman', usually with weird and funny results.

The image below is me as an Apeman :-)



http://www.faceofthefuture.org.uk/

Monday 16 June 2008

http://visualroute.visualware.com

VisualRoute is a graphical traceroute test to any IP address, which can help identify network performance or routing problems and identify IP address locations.

http://visualroute.visualware.com

Sunday 8 June 2008

www.runescape.com

Well, despite the fact that we've had more than 3 kids in the house playing this against each other on several occasions, I didn't know that Runescape runs as a Java applet until Gary mentioned it last week.

For those that you that don't know, Runescape is a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) like World of Warcraft, which runs quickly and uses 3D graphics to display characters, locations and allow you to interact with other players anywhere in the world.

www.runescape.com

Friday 30 May 2008

Super Mario Brothers

Not much of a business case for this applet, but it helps to demonstrate the wide variety of uses for Java applets: this is the Super Mario Brothers game in an applet.

http://www.nintendo8.com/game/629/super_mario_brothers/

Tuesday 27 May 2008

Video Player

A page displaying a video of a Linux Magazine speaker about Apache 3.0, but the window displaying the video is a Java applet, which is surprising as Java's multimedia support has been less than impressive for a long time.

The page is also using LiveConnect to call JavaScript methods in the page, and seems to be including Prototype and JSON files too, so it's a good demonstration of applets interacting with other elements on the web page, something we covered in our JavaOne session earlier this month.

http://streaming.linux-magazin.de/events/apacheconfree/archive/rfielding/frames-java.htm

(Found via http://www.adam-bien.com/roller/abien/entry/it_s_not_flash_it1)

Sunday 18 May 2008

www.jscreenfix.com

JScreenFix is a very useful Applet: it rapidly turns on and off random pixels to prevent monitor 'burn-in' and to fix 'stuck pixels' on LCD monitors. If you've had stuck pixels you'll know how annoying they can be - run this applet for 20 mins and you should get rid of them. How cool is that?

www.jscreenfix.com

Tuesday 13 May 2008

Scenegraph

Project Scenegraph aims to provide scenegraph functionality at the Java level, and has a few cool JavaFX demo applets using the SceneGraph API.

You'll need the very latest Java 6 Update 10 plugin to run these demos, and the page will take a little time to work as it has a number of other JARs to download.

https://scenegraph-demos.dev.java.net/demo-applets.html

Thursday 1 May 2008

www.uk.map24.com

Map 24 provide interactive street maps, complete with searching by address, points of interest and full directions, using an applet.

They presented a very good technical session on applets at last year's JavaOne, where I seem to remember that they said they are one of the most popular applet sites and are responsible for a lot for the JRE download traffic that Sun gets.

Try it out - the applet loads very quickly, is very fast at rendering maps and very responsive to use, so it's a great example to use to dispel the 'applets are slow' myth.

www.uk.map24.com

Tuesday 29 April 2008

swinglabs.java.sun.com/iris

IRIS (Interactive Rich Imaging Software) was one of the most impressive demos at last year's JavaOne conference. It mixes applets with AJAX to provide a photo viewer and editing tool that connects to Flickr to allow you to see slideshows, edit photos and upload photos to your Flickr account.

I'm not certain about the division of labour between the applet and JavaScript, but I'm fairly sure that the applet is handling most of the communications as well as the 3D graphics (via JOGL).

The slideshow transitions are nicely done.

http://swinglabs.java.sun.com/iris/ (requires Java 6 to run)

Sunday 27 April 2008

www.j2e.com

just2easy provides a full WYSYWYG word processor in an applet, providing the usual text formatting and layout, as well as automatically giving each document you create a unique URL so it can be viewed by anyone with a browser.

www.j2e.com

Saturday 26 April 2008

www.upnext.com

This is a really impressive applet based website that allows you to fly around New York, like Google Earth, but also allows you to see details about businesses and buildings, post reviews of places and read others' reviews. I like the ability to click on individual buildings - very cool.

I hope they extend it to include other cities soon.

www.upnext.com