This document demonstrates these techniques. Preparing Java code to run inside a browser is a multi-stage process. After the code is written, the programmer compiles it into an intermediate state called a class file. Class files are downloaded into the browser along with other objects, such as GIF images, referenced by the HTML document. It is now up to the browser to translate the machine independent class files into native binary code.
Some browsers interpret and execute the java one instruction at a time.
This is a slow process and would make java unsuitable for computation intensive tasks. Fortunately, browser vendors are now developing compilers that translate the class files into native machine code after downloading. Experienced programmers may wish to browse the Netscape technical documentation for additional information. For example, the first physics lab at Davidson College is an introduction to mean, standard deviation, and standard error using a 10 pennies and counting the number of heads. You do not have to become a Java head to use Java applets.