Most personal computers are equipped with either Netscape or Internet Explorer. Traditional full-featured host access clients often occupy tens of megabytes of storage space. While this is usually not of concern in laptop computers with multigigabyte hard drives, using browser-based host access frees up the majority of the space by allowing the client to be downloaded only when necessary. If network speed is a concern, host access based on Java technology can be persisted in the browser on the first download. Applets stored in this fashion take up much less disk space than traditional clients.
Version management becomes extremely simple.
When a persisted applet is run, the version number is checked, and if a newer version of the applet is available on the Web server, it is replaced. Desktops need never be touched, and all changes to applet versions can be done once at the server level. Similarly, if access to new systems is required, or withdrawn from old systems, a single modified configuration parameter will suffice for all users concerned with the change. Other options include providing both a standard green screen interface and a rejuvenated interface using the same client applet. A number of different implementations can be made and offered to different groups of users.