LiveConnect? (Score 1)

I see that no one has mentioned LiveConnect, so I figured I'd chime in.

Forget that horid wait while 100K of HTML downloads when the application just wanted to update one field on the page.

Netscape developed LiveConnect over 7 years ago to do exactly that. Well, not exactly, but it enabled communication between Java applets and Javascript, which allows for dynamic updates without page refreshes. Yes, this new standard may be met with much broader browser support, but it's not like the technology is revolutionary.

Check out this guy's page for an example: http://members.ozemail.com.au/~dcrombie/java/Pendu lum.htm