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Comment by lobster_johnson | Hacker News Reader

Based on adoption rates I would say Java applets were very successful. One area were Java applets were still actively used until very recently was in online banking, where it was used for secure OTP entry. I'm sure there are still some that use it.

As a technology, it was fairly clear even in the late nineties that Java was a bad fit for the web.

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Brazilian banks do that. Nearly all of them. It is a major pain.

Some are moving away from them, but installing spyware instead.

>Based on adoption rates I would say Java applets were very successful.

How successful exactly? Crappy banking sites aside, you could, even in 2000 or 2005, surf the whole web with Java disabled and not have any problem.

That was less true if you disabled Flash.

Java applets were all over the place for many years. I remember there were tons of maths, CS and physics sites that used Java to render things like simulations and algorithms.

Sometimes the Java stuff was hidden: Before XMLHttpRequest I personally used Java in several web apps as a way to do messaging with the server, because Java permitted you to do arbitrary socket connections. You inserted a 0x0 applet into the page and then used the JS bridge that both IE and Netscape provided. Aside from the JVM startup time (which could be several seconds) it was pretty great, actually. I wrote a commercial audio conferencing system that showed the talk status of each participant, for example.

Basically, Java applets were (were, mind you) highly successful before the advent of Flash and AJAX.

Very recently being when?

I don't remember anytime where I've used a Java Applet on any single banking site.

The Norwegian government's BankID system (used by all Norwegian banks, and also supported as a login mechanism across all the government's digital solutions, including the national paperwork portal where everyone files their tax returns) only migrated away from Java 18 months ago [1].

[1] http://www.dinside.no/931165/dnb-dropper-java-fra-november

I Germany, the web site of the German equivalent of the IRS uses a Java applet to do the Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung (don't ask me what that is in English, though).

So it's not banking per se, but it's finance-related.

VAT Return. (According to Google Translate)

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