Anthony has posted an entry with a plea to sun requesting appropriate surpport in the JDK for HTML:

There is [...] one thing missing from the Java APIs, one thing that in my opinion is holding back Java from becoming a truly powerful client-side platform: there is no free, HTML 4.x/XHTML, CSS, JavaScript compliant web component in the Java toolkit.
[...]

So what can Sun do to remedy this situation? I suggest that Sun should either a.) license a browser component from a commercial vendor with a license that would allow them to distribute it with the Java Runtime, b.) purchase a commercial vendor which develops a pure Java web browser (IceSoft would be a prime candidate) or c.) work much closer with the Mozilla/Java developers to write a wrapper for accessing Mozilla through Java APIs.

Sun, you must do something at this point. Microsoft is looming and I am sure that more than a few projects have been written in Microsoft-friendly languages because of the lack of a browser component in the Java APIs.