An applet is a small program that is embedded inside another application. Applets are not intended to run on their own. A Java applet is an applet written in the Java programming language. They are most commonly embedded in web pages to run in the environment of a web browser. Web pages are written in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). The web browser interprets the HTML source in order to render the pages on a display screen. Without using Java applets, HTML is quite limited in functionality, particularly in graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and multimedia. A Java applet is like a window application running within the embedding web page. It can provide much more sophisticated features in graphical user interfaces for interaction, as well as other functionalities such as animation and special effects.

The web browser must be equipped with the Java Virtual Machine (JVM...