applet - What Java versions are commonly installed on browsers, is it safe to assume 1.4?

Question

Is there any site/analysis about what Java version most people are using on WWW ? It seems this data is not available on webserver logs (vs. Flash versions)

Can we safely set e.g. Java 1.4.2 as minimum requirement for our applet, or are there still many users using Java 1.1 (MS one) or Java 1.2-1.3 ?

It's still a bit of a complicated process to update Java if it's too old, e.g. admin rights are needed on Windows machine and it's bit difficult in some Linux distros too.

Answer 1

This chart might help.

From 1,471,010 browsers across 47 sites in the past 30 days...

• 6% had 1.4,
• 16% had 1.5
• 50% had 1.6

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/editors/archives/2009/03/bedbugs_and_bal.html is an article that talks about the chart.