[exceptione]

I remember that loading a flash plugin would choke the browser for a while. I think we always had to to pay a startup penalty.

I have experienced flash for the last time a while ago though, so my memory might have been corrupted in the mean time. Also, I am talking about computing capacity of a decade ago, so the comparison is never going to be fair.

But I am definitely sure that the java applets were a disaster in terms of UX (slow to load, interaction feeling very foreign).