An applet is a small application that executed inside a larger application, such as a web browser. On the Web, an applet is typically sent along with a Web page to a user. Applets are more limited than standard applications because they do not have access to some computer resources (such as a printer), nor network resources (such as other computers).

In the past, the term “applet” only referred to applications written with Java. But today, the term “applet” has no bearing on the language that was used to program it. For example, items in the Windows Control Panel are called Control Panel Applets. J# Browser Controls provide a way for developers to migrate their existing Java applet source code to run within the context of the .Net Framework.