Curt Sampson
Java is part of the Java platform, that brought OS independence and interoperability at the right time. .Download-execution on the client was also a reason for the initial success of Java in the Internet era.
This may be somewhat anecdotal evidence, but I disagree with both of your statements here. I've rarely known anybody to use Java cross-platform in a non-trival way, barring a few major GUI-centric projects such as Eclipse. (I've far more cross-platform use of Haskell than Java myself.) And I know of nobody who did anything serious with download-execution of Java.
Well I (dis)agree with you both :-) I think these things - running Java programs in the browser, and cross-platformness - were very important in making Java popular, even if they ended up being, at best, peripheral uses of the language. Still, they served to hype the language to an industry that had just gotten used to object orientation, and thus clearing the path for Java's adoption as a successor to C++ (where it was and is quite successful). -k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants