Major differences between applications and applets in JAVA

1. Applets are not allowed to use file I/O and sockets (other than to the host

platform). Applications do not have these restrictions.
2.  An applet must be a subclass of the Java Applet class. Aplications do not need to

subclass any particular class.

3. Unlike applets, applications can have menus.

4. Unlike applications, applets need to respond to predefined lifecycle messages

from the WWW browser in which they're running.