java applets old & new

[Jan Meyer]

I had to recompile someone else's java applets with a new 'magic number'
that the previous guy hard wired into the code.

I used the latest greatest versions
even tried javac -version 1.1 option

with version 1.1
http://square1.com/CustContainer/a1/infinity.html

with the latest greatest
http://square1.com/CustContainer/infinity/infinity.html

Now others only get a blank page with a question mark.

None of the code was changed, but it does give warnings of deprecated
functions.

What's the fastest and easiest way to get this to work with whatever the
end user has???


tia

 

[Andrew Thompson]

I had to recompile someone else's java applets with a new 'magic number'
that the previous guy hard wired into the code.

I used the latest greatest versions
even tried javac -version 1.1 option

with version 1.1
http://square1.com/CustContainer/a1/infinity.html

with the latest greatest
http://square1.com/CustContainer/infinity/infinity.html

Now others only get a blank page with a question mark.

Both applets come up ok in an IE 6 on XP _that has the
1.4.2 JRE installed_.

Combining that with what you said I suspect the following..
- The users who only see the 'blank page', see it for both URL's.
- They use IE 6.
- Their IE 6 has _no_ JRE installed.

To detect this you could try the (rather broken) htmlconverter
that relies on javascript, _or_ use the Java Version Applet
http://www.physci.org/test/JRE/ along with a 'no java' tag.

RE '..get this to work with whatever the end user has..'
you might check http://www.physci.org/test/java/PlugIn.html
for more details on the history of the current situation
and why you cannot afford to assume _anything_ about
what the user has installed or available.

 

[Tim Tyler]

I had to recompile someone else's java applets with a new 'magic number'
that the previous guy hard wired into the code.

I used the latest greatest versions
even tried javac -version 1.1 option

with version 1.1
http://square1.com/CustContainer/a1/infinity.html

with the latest greatest
http://square1.com/CustContainer/infinity/infinity.html

The latter can say: "Class inifinty not found" on some JVMs.

 

[John C. Bollinger]

I had to recompile someone else's java applets with a new 'magic number'
that the previous guy hard wired into the code.

I used the latest greatest versions
even tried javac -version 1.1 option

with version 1.1
http://square1.com/CustContainer/a1/infinity.html

with the latest greatest
http://square1.com/CustContainer/infinity/infinity.html

Now others only get a blank page with a question mark.

None of the code was changed, but it does give warnings of deprecated
functions.

What's the fastest and easiest way to get this to work with whatever the
end user has???

Both load and display their GUIs for me with Java 1.4.1 on Mozilla, but
neither GUI seems to be functional. They take a considerable amount of
time to initialize and display the GUI as well -- an impatient user on a
slow machine might assume it wasn't working. And no matter what, you're
up a creek if you run into a user who has no JVM at all configured in
his browser -- such as many who either have very recent copies of
Windows or who keep carefully up to date on their Windows patches, but
who have not installed a third-party JVM.

Just how old is the applet? Is it possible that it was designed for
Java 1.0? Java 1.0's event handling system was rather different from
that of Java 1.1 and later, and if you have to deal with that then you
would be well advised to tear out the 1.0 stuff and replace it with the
new(er) style. The amount of work involved would depending on the
complexity of the code.


John Bollinger
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Andrew Thompson]

slow machine might assume it wasn't working. And no matter what, you're
up a creek if you run into a user who has no JVM at all configured in
his browser --

You can always use the 'no applet' part of the applet tag
to let the user know what is missing from the page, or redirect.

The situation is never totally hopeless.