A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
Since a long time one of the critisiced problems of the java-plugin is the loading time.
Even on new high-end hardware it takes arround 10s for just the plugin to load, during this
time some browsers are totally unresponsive giving the user a really bad impression.
Keeping in mind that MANY users don't own a 2.0ghz P4 for browsing the net this fact is even more critical, to wait 25s for an small applet is simply unacceptable.

There have been many promises over the last years that loading time in general will be enhanced and many statements how fast java now starts up after almost every new release.
However benchmarking startup-time for some of my real-test applets shows that there is almost no difference between 1.4.0/1.4.2/1.5.0_u6/Mustang.

The new applet loading screen caused a regression on my Duron-800/512mb ram of almost 20-30% for one of my applets (which does a lot of class-loading and work in the init-method) but when I reported it I was told by a Sun engineer that they do not care about such old systems. However they are still in use!
Mustang on this system takes about twice the time to load compared with 1.5.0_u6.

Please try some improvements which really make a difference.

JUSTIFICATION :
  To make applets more useful for web-developers

EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
startup in 5-10s on slow systems, 2-3 on faster (P4-2ghz)
ACTUAL -
slow startup

CUSTOMER SUBMITTED WORKAROUND :
nothing, use 1.4.2 which has till now the fastest cold-start performance