HotJava
Web browser
title: "HotJava" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["discontinued-web-browsers", "java-platform-software", "sun-microsystems-software"] description: "Web browser" topic_path: "technology/web" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotJava" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Web browser ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox software"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| screenshot | MainPage-HotJava3-Optim.png |
| caption | HotJava 3.0 under Windows XP |
| developer | Sun Microsystems |
| released | |
| latest release version | Late v3.0 |
| programming language | Java |
| language | English |
| discontinued | yes |
| genre | Web browser |
| website | www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/index-136232.html |
| :: |
| logo = | screenshot = MainPage-HotJava3-Optim.png | caption = HotJava 3.0 under Windows XP | developer = Sun Microsystems | released = | latest release version = Late v3.0 | latest release date = | latest preview version = | latest preview date = | programming language = Java | operating system = | language = English | discontinued = yes | genre = Web browser | license = | website = www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/index-136232.html HotJava (later called HotJava Browser to distinguish it from HotJava Views) was a modular, extensible web browser from Sun Microsystems implemented in Java. It was the first browser to support Java applets, and was Sun's demonstration platform for the then-new technology. It has since been discontinued and is no longer supported. Furthermore, the Sun Download Center was taken down on July 31, 2011, and the download link on the official site points to a placeholder page saying so.
Origins
In 1994, a team of Oak/Java developers started writing WebRunner, which was a clone of the web browser Mosaic. It was based on the Java programming language. The name ‘WebRunner’ was a tribute to the Blade Runner movie. The official Java name was adopted a year later in 1995 when Sun decided to make Oak public and integrate it with the web.
WebRunner's first public demonstration was given by John Gage and James Gosling at the Technology Entertainment Design Conference in Monterey, California in 1995. Renamed HotJava, it was officially announced in May the same year at the SunWorld conference.
The parser code was reused by the standard Java libraries.
Usage
HotJava had somewhat limited functionality compared to other browsers of its time.
More critically, HotJava suffered from the inherent performance limitations of Java virtual machine implementations of the day (both in terms of processing speed and memory consumption) and hence was considerably sluggish.
References
References
- Rakitin, Jason. (October 27, 1997). "Review: Alternative Web browsers". Network World Fusion.
- (March 11, 1997). "Sun Microsystems, Inc. to Ship HotJava Browser 1.0; New Customizable Browser Enables Custom Web Interface". Business Wire.
- Watson, Dave. (July 21, 2001). "A Quick Look at HotJava". The Southern California OS/2 User Group.
- "Sun Download Center Decommission".
- Byous, Jon. (1998). "Java Technology: An Early History". [[Sun Microsystems]].
- "HTMLEditorKit (Java 2 Platform SE v1.4.2)".
- Killelea, Patrick. (2002). "Web Performance Tuning: Speeding Up the Web". O'Reilly Media, Incorporated.
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