An applet in Java is a small application that is designed to be embedded within a web page. It runs inside a web browser and works on the client-side, providing dynamic and interactive content to the web page. Applets are written in Java and are embedded in an HTML page using the <applet> or <object> tags and hosted on a web server. They are used to make websites more dynamic and entertaining, providing interactive functionality that is not possible with only HTML. Applets are not stand-alone programs; instead, they run within a web browser or an applet viewer. They are a fully functional Java application and have the entire Java API at their disposal, making them capable of performing various tasks within the web page.
Applets were widely used in the past to provide interactive content on web pages, but major web browsers began to remove support for the underlying technology applets used from 2013, and applets became completely non-executable by 2015-2017. As a result, support for running applets in the browser ended in March 2019, and Java applets were deprecated as of Java 9 in 2017.
In summary, Java applets are small Java programs that can be embedded into web pages to provide dynamic and interactive content, but their usage has significantly declined due to changes in web browser support and the deprecation of applets in Java 9.
