How the Deprecation of Java Applets Affected Online Visualization Frameworks - A Case Study

Abstract

The JavaView visualization framework was designed at the end of the 1990s as a software that provides-among other services- easy, interactive geometry visualizations on web pages.We discuss how this and other design goals were met and present several applications to highlight the contemporary use-cases of the framework. However, as JavaView's easy web exports was based on Java Applets, the deprecation of this technology disabled one main functionality of the software. The remainder of the article uses JavaView as an example to highlight the effects of changes in the underlying programming language on a visualization toolkit. We discuss possible reactions of software to such challenges, where the JavaView framework serves as an example to illustrate development decisions. These discussions are guided by the broader, underlying question as to how long it is sensible to maintain a software.