[thelist] Applets

[kev.skindrill]

Hi
   You know the story, you get an e-mail with a link, you check it out &
there are other interesting links so you look at them... Well, I
accidentally came across this http://www.absurd.org/ and all I could say was
WOW! Yeah, it's just stupid eye candy but things like that impress me ;) I
looked at the source and found that this effect was produced by an applet. I
did a bit of a search on Google and found another site with some interesting
applets, although I was actually looking for info on how this type of thing
was achieved, although most of the hits were sites offering applets, not how
to make them. So, my questions are

1. Apparently I will need to learn Java if I want to write my own applets,
can anyone recommend a good site/book?
2. How hard a language is it to learn?
3. Apart from not having Java enabled, are there any browser
incompatibilities?
4. What is the general opinion of these little programs, I can't remember
ever seeing a thread about it on the List?

Cheers

Kev