Web pages at the time could at most <blink>, its interactivity was extremely limited compared to what we have know. Meanwhile a java applet could include a full-blown IDE/CAD/what have you
Well, web pages could submit forms, which was the main thing. I remember working on apps where we went with web pages because applets were too slow, regardless of the features we gave up. Images were generated on the back end instead, for example.
