I think Sun has a point. HTML5 says:
The applet element is now obsoleted so that all extension frameworks
(Java, .NET, Flash, etc) are handled in a consistent manner.
In other words, it's no longer valid for reasons of theoretical purity and not because of any practical problem. Frankly, I find <applet>
simpler and more reliable to use in the real world and continue to use it.
While deployJava.js
might hide the gory details away, the reality is that under the hood, it still uses <applet>
in some circumstances.