Java was now the GUI of choice for client-side applications, and Sun's OpenStep plans were quietly dropped (see Lighthouse Design). NEO was re-positioned as a Java system with the introduction of the "Joe" framework, but it saw little use. Components of NEO and Joe were eventually subsumed into Enterprise JavaBeans. Although distributed objects, and CORBA in particular, were the "next big thing" in the early 1990s, by the second half of the decade interest in them had essentially disappeared. Web-based applications running entirely on the server became the new "next big thing", and the need for a powerful display system on the client side faded, largely replaced by lightweight GUIs based on HTML and JavaScript ("Browser User Interfaces"). References External links Common Object Request Broker Architecture Object-oriented programming Application programming interfaces Sun Microsystems software Vaporware