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/

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)

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

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

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

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)

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