[spullara]

Ironically if Java developers had used the built in DOM APIs instead of the Applet canvas crap, we probably would have had great SPAs a lot earlier.

[chii]

> DOM APIs instead of the Applet canvas crap

i wonder if it was because at the time, the different DOM api in each browser was so immature, that to unify it into a single api is too big a task. The applet+blackbox region for rendering is the easiest MVP. Of course, with hindsight, that turned out to be a piece of crap.

[zaphirplane]

Isn’t that jquery? Seems surmounted by a few very talented people

[therealx]

True, and if gui libraries stuck with common widgets that were cross platform, we would already have a long term native cross platform GUI toolkit.