An applet is a program that is shipped from a server to a client browser and run in that browser. A servlet is a program that activated by a client browser and run on a servlet server.

In this chapter, you learn how browser forms call and send arguments to servlets, and you learn how servlets receive arguments from and deliver results back to browsers.

The word servlet is derived from server + applet; thus, a servlet is a little server-side application. Nothing prevents you from writing large servlets, however.