One of the things that annoys me and also detracts from the user experience with Java applets is that while the JVM is starting there is absolutley no indication that anything is happening in the browser. The progress bar in the status bar freezes, the cursor freezes and the entire browser fails to respond. I am not talking about what happens when the orange Java logo and its animation appear - that's great - it's what happens *before* that I am referring to. I realise that the time before the orange logo appears is getting shorter with Update N but I would still like to see *something* that indicates that Java is loading before that.

How about a small splash screen (or even some simple text) that says something like "Java loading..." in the center of the applet or on the status bar? That would be a huge improvement that's easy to implement!