> Java applets were never that big. They didn't work very well (for the reason you mention) and weren't ubiquitous. They also nearly all looked like shit.

It's also entirely possible you were encountering them more than you thought. My highschool website, for example, had around 4-8 on the homepage - minimalistic applets that simply showed and cycled through images, placed in a grid in the header area. They totally could have been javascript instead, you couldn't tell the difference just using the page.