The Java applets that could be embedded in any Web site couldn't compete with the smooth animation and anti-aliasing of Flash. See the special report on rich Internet application development. Microsoft fought back with dynamic HTML, later reborn as AJAX, and the applet threat to Redmond's Web dominance faded away.

[ See the Test Center's reviews of Microsoft Silverlight 2, Adobe AIR 1.5, and Adobe Flex Builder 3.0. Java fights Flash (InfoWorld) A long time ago, in an ancient world when the Internet was young, the Java language was so hot that Fortune put Darbee McNealy on the cover with a superhero costume and the name "Java Man." The cross-architecture power of Java was going to remake the computer world and become the default OS for all of computerdom. Although Java found a great deal of success in education, scientific computing, and server farms, it never got far on the desktop. ] It's now more than 11 years later and is back to take another stab at owning user-level interaction.

The task is harder because Adobe has AIR alongside Flex and Flash, all slightly different tools offering some functionality beyond HTML and JavaScript.

Flash alone is on its 10th version and comes with more features than ever before.