If you have read the Overview page on AjaxSwing you may already understand how such an automatic conversion is possible. Since applets base their user interface on AWT or Swing, they interact with users through this GUI layer. AjaxSwing will run applets on the server, but the user input will be emulated based on the actions performed in the browser. Essentially, AjaxSwing provides the AppletContext for the applet that will be deployed as HTML.

There are many advantages of using this approach. First, it provides a cross-browser applets environment that is the most versatile because the browsers do not even need to support Java, or have it enabled. Also, there is no need to worry about which version of JDK is supported by the browser and if it follows the standards of Java specification. Second, it provides network traffic optimization for applets, by executing applets on the server. All calls made from the applet will be local which results in very fast execution of applets. The only data sent across the wire is the presentation HTML. Third, improving the download speed of applets and network traffic optimization is gained without penalty because no .class files will be travelling over the Internet to the browser. Finally, security can be improved by not sending any .class files and running the connection over SSL.This requirs no complex SSL programming and the only requirement is setting up the web server to run AjaxSwing serlvet in secure sockets layer (SSL).

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