As I started to learn Java, I came across a tutorial for making Java applets. As I read on, I found some similarities between Java applets and Flash movies. Right when I saw the source code for a checkerboard picture made in Java, I said to myself, Flash beats Java applets big time! It also took a while to load such a small applet when in Flash it instantly loaded.

In my opinion, I think flash beats Java applets when it comes to convenience, appearance, load time, animation, and more (except AJAX).

Here are two articles, first supporting java applets and the other flash movies:

1. http://www.winneronline.com/articles/septe...javavsflash.htm
2. http://www.realchat.com/blog/java-vs-flash/

What I found was that:

1. Java applet is bigger
2. Java applets takes longer to download
3. Java applets require more coding

These recent times, I have barely seen any online games written in Java. Most of the times these online games have been using Flash technology instead.

So what are your opinions on this?

Actually, from what I understand, java applets are used more for big games (i.e. runescape). It would be very hard to write runescape in flash as flash doesn't really have 3D capabilities. Flash I would suppose is used more for small games like wack-a-mole and stuff like that. stuf that a single developer can make. Flash is also used in website too; because, as you said, flash loads faster. I think flash and java have their strong and weak points, depending on what you plan to make depends on which language to use.

Flash has the ability to create 3 dimensional games. I've already played a handful of them. You can check out arcadepod.com to see the 3D games. I know shockwave has some. Runescape is more vector looking than flash. Flash can be realistic too.