An applet is a special kind of Java program that a browser enabled with Java technology can download from the internet and run.

An applet is typically embedded inside a web page and runs in the context of a browser. An applet must be a subclass of the java.applet.Applet class. The Applet class provides the standard interface between the applet and the browser environment.

Swing provides a special subclass of the Applet class called javax.swing.JApplet. The JApplet class should be used for all applets that use Swing components to construct their graphical user interfaces (GUIs).