These are two very interesting articles about applets, their history and predictions about their future.

• Are applets making a comeback? by Jeff Friesen.
  Jeff asked some Gurus (Roman Guy, Chet Haase, Jim Weaver and others) about their opinion. I found it very interesting how Roman and Chet, authors of Filthy Rich Clients, responded to the questions. For those who don’t know, Chet just left Sun a couple of weeks ago and now works for Adobe (AIR, Flex).
• The new applet experience by Jeff Friesen.
  In this article Jeff takes a tour into Applets, JavaFX, and Java 6 Update n. Very nice to read and he points out some rough edges of using Java for RIA’s.

Related posts:

1. Java Applets! Dead? Rockin?
2. Update: Java SE 6 Update 10 Beta available
3. Further Google App Engine Java (GAE/J) Information
4. Sun (Oracle) going to launch a Java App Store!
5. Google App Engine supports Java