For better or worse -- better, IMHO -- Buchheit's spec on his blog entry rules out Java. Quote: "Unfortunately, Java applets don't actually work, and after 11 years of not working, I'm not expecting that to change."
My experience is contrary to that. I've deployed applets to the general public with success. (No, not 100 percent, but the same can be said of javascript and flash.)
Hmmm ... I guess I'm not the general public, but I'm running a fairly generic install of Firefox 2.0, and the page comes up with a big grey box with a red X in it. I'm not actually sure why this is, as I'm sure I've had some Java apps working in the past.
Update: Oh, the Java console shows something about an "UnsupportedClassVersionError".
That happens when you try to run a Java app that was compiled with a newer compiler on an older VM. Most likely, the demo was built with Java 1.6 and you've still got 1.5. It's working on my browser.
...It's also slow to load and incredibly clunky. Why, Swing, did you have to reimplement every native widget so that none of them look the way we expect? I think Paul's "no Java applets" remark is on the money here.
