"Sun released Java Plug-in 1.1 in April '98. Shortly thereafter, JavaWorld polled its readership to gauge reaction to this product. The Java Plug-in 1.1.1 and 1.1.2 maintenance releases followed. (See Resources for details on the JavaWorld poll and releases of Java Plug-in.)"
"Note: The background portion of the poll originally indicated that Java Plug-in does not support non-Win32 computers when, in fact, it works with Win32, Solaris, and Linux computers. JavaWorld regrets the error."
"Since the original intention was for Java to be available to any application, not just the browser, the VM should ultimately be available as an operating system driver (as it already is in OS/2 Warp). Sun addressed this last year with the release of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), which contains everything necessary to execute Java code (the VM and class libraries). Once JRE is loaded onto your system, any application can embed Java objects just like a browser. The problem is that the browsers were still using their own hard-coded versions of the VM and had no mechanism for accessing JRE."
