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In my testing the JavaScript version had a better "boot time" (it was able to begin showing results instantly) - and rendered better/faster for simple examples. However, the Java Applets simply scale better. They can handle pretty much anything you throw at them. If you're just tackling simple stuff (pretty much anything that I demoed on the site) then Processing/Canvas is probably the way to go.

Are they? At least for my tech-oriented blog, the percentage of visitors using canvas-compatible browsers and the percentage with Java applets enabled is roughly the same. And the former is bound to get higher while the latter goes the other way. So for sites that have a high ratio of non-IE users that are concerned about subjecting those users to the various Java applet pains.

File size of a Processing.js compared to a Java app is generally smaller.

I did a quick test and got 22kb overhead with the JS version and 233kb overhead with the Java Applet, that's WITH the library included.

More details here:

http://processingjs.org/reference/articles/comparing-process...