There's nothing in Java that says that a method in a class can only return object types that the class inherits from. Your Applet is running in some sort of environment (a context, if you will). The Applet.getAppletContext method returns an AppletContext object which describes this environment.

There is nothing called DOS applet.. You can run Java applet from DOS..

Any Java class that extends java.applet.Applet is an applet. http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/applet/Applet.html

Because an applet runs in a browser, and in this context the one in charge of the launch and execution of the applet is the Java Plug-in software in the browser.

This plugin controls the applet life cycle through methods in our applet. These methods are init, start, stop and destroy.

In this case the methods that the plugin search to begin the execution of the applet are init (to initialize itself) and start (to start the execution of the task in the applet).

QuakeNet has its own webchat applet named 'qwebirc'. Preferably using their own applet. Information about their applet can be found on their website. A direct link to incorporating a client hosted on their server follows, http://webchat.quakenet.org/. Incorporating their applet on your own server is possible too, by installing their applet's source code on your server. A direct link to the source code for the applet can be found at http://qwebirc.org/.