is java the way to go?

hi,
i wanted to get opinions on a concept i have for development.
i'm building a cataloging application to run on the users machines (not online).
i want it to run through a browser window as people are familiar with that interface.
and i want there to be as little instalation as possible, maybe even none.
i dont want there to be any licencing issues.

so i was thinking of developing in java and html, and using text files for storing info (that way there is no database instalation required.) would that make sense?
would it be better to create applets and call them to html pages or should i use something like xml/xsl and use java to read/write to the xml docs.
which would be faster and would there be limitations?

i need this application to be a platform independent as possible?

i plan to use this opportunity to learn new technologies so i'm open to any suggestions. (but i am very keen on learning java)
i am a php/asp person (and databases) but i cant use any server parsed languages for this project as the application must run on any machine, not just servers.

i know this is a vague question but i just wanted to hear some opinions from people more familiar with free-standing-application development than me.

thanks,
vauneen

If your application must be as platform independent as possible, java is surely the way to go. I can't give you any ideas about applets, never worked with it, but I'd avoid working with them. My ideas of applets is that you can have an application inside one HTML-page but I'm sure you'll want more. A cataloging application is only nice if you can have links on one page leading to another page.
As far as text files and XML is concerned, I can see your point why you would want to avoid databases. But if your catalog is going to grow soon, wouldn't you prefer it to be performant ? In that case, a database would seem unavoidable. Anyway, for working with textfiles with or without xml, I hope someone else can give you a clue.
Good luck with java; take your time to learn and love it.