Microsoft IE after 1-1-2004: no more applets?

[wnstnsmith]

Dear all,

A friend of mine just got a new PC, and a new MSIE. Not surprisingly, it
balks at every webpage containing an applet, warning that the JVM must first
be downloaded and installed. What is surprising, and unpleasantly so, is
that following up on that admonition and its link does no longer start a
download, but sends her straight into a quagmire of palaver on the
microsoft-sun wars, saying that support for the microsoft JVM has been
terminated as of 1-1-2004.
Also, in the Advanced Internet Options list of MSIE, the whole section on
Java has disappeared.

My question is a purely practical one: what can/must one do to get MSIE to
support applets now? My friend already spent fruitless hours and still has
no working JVM, and I simply cannot believe that the outcome of Sun's
struggle with Microsoft should be that half the internet -- including, most
impportantly of couse, my own pages -- has become out of bounds to new MSIE
users overnight.

Appreciate the help,

WS

 

[Sudsy]

My question is a purely practical one: what can/must one do to get MSIE to
support applets now? My friend already spent fruitless hours and still has
no working JVM, and I simply cannot believe that the outcome of Sun's
struggle with Microsoft should be that half the internet -- including, most
impportantly of couse, my own pages -- has become out of bounds to new MSIE
users overnight.

Since I echew M$, I can't give you directions on how to install the
JVM for Exploder although I'd start at <http://java.sun.com/download>.
Why does it surprise you that M$ uses FUD to portray technologies/
products it doesn't control in a bad light? Have you been asleep for
the last two decades?

 

[Ike]

Just go to:

http://www.java.com/en/download/

It puts the latest Java2 plugin into your system - wham, now you run
applets. No problems here. -Ike

 

[Andrew Thompson]

....
| A friend of mine just got a new PC, and a new MSIE. Not
surprisingly, it
| balks at every webpage containing an applet, warning that the
JVM must first
| be downloaded and installed. What is surprising, and
unpleasantly so, is
| that following up on that admonition and its link

What link? Tell her to try this one, and stop
wasting her time p***ing about with MS.
http://java.com/en/index.jsp

For your own pages, I'd recommend installing
the JavaVersionApplet..
http://www.physci.org/test/JRE/
or you could rely on Sun's own htmlconverter,
which depends on JavaScript to work
(my solution is pure java/html)

 

[Derek Clarkson]

(e-mail address removed) wrote:

....

My question is a purely practical one: what can/must one do to get MSIE to
support applets now? My friend already spent fruitless hours and still has

....

To be honest, the first thing I do on any MS system is load a copy of
Firebird or Opera. IE is getting too old and doesn't support many of the
latest technologies.

 

[wnstnsmith]

That's all very well (and you weren't the first or the only one to take this
familiar but unproductive tack), but there's the small matter of rest of the
world to consider: millions upon millions of MS-slaves, many of them
willy-nilly, for years to come. That's the people I wish to visit my pages,
it is also the people who are badly served by yelling "hey, dork, use Opera"
or similar abuse at them.
There are bound to be heaps of non-geek people over times to come who run
into the problem I sketched: you buy a new computer, you get a new MSIE, and
it won't work and send you into a desert full of dreary documents and
deception and disappointent -- but no JVM in sight.
So the least I can do is to figure out what the easiest way out is, and
clearly tell the unsuspecting victims what to do and please come back after
you've done it. That's not so unreasonable, is it?

Remember, the net is about publishing, so it is about readers. It is their
preferences and limitations that count, not mine as a publisher of pages.

WS

 

[Andrew Thompson]

| That's all very well (and you weren't the first or the only one
to take this
| familiar but unproductive tack), but there's the small matter
(yada, yada yada..)

So WS, how did the http://www.physci.org/test/JRE/
work out for you? Wot's ur URL'n I'll even check it
for you (insofar as I can)..

 

[Joona I Palaste]

(e-mail address removed) scribbled the following:

That's all very well (and you weren't the first or the only one to take this
familiar but unproductive tack), but there's the small matter of rest of the
world to consider: millions upon millions of MS-slaves, many of them
willy-nilly, for years to come. That's the people I wish to visit my pages,
it is also the people who are badly served by yelling "hey, dork, use Opera"
or similar abuse at them.
There are bound to be heaps of non-geek people over times to come who run
into the problem I sketched: you buy a new computer, you get a new MSIE, and
it won't work and send you into a desert full of dreary documents and
deception and disappointent -- but no JVM in sight.
So the least I can do is to figure out what the easiest way out is, and
clearly tell the unsuspecting victims what to do and please come back after
you've done it. That's not so unreasonable, is it?

Remember, the net is about publishing, so it is about readers. It is their
preferences and limitations that count, not mine as a publisher of pages.

So as long as the readers are owned by Microsoft, the net is owned by
Microsoft?

 

[wnstnsmith]

So as long as the readers are owned by Microsoft, the net is owned by
Microsoft?

That's not the point. The point is that you wrote in English, even though
you may find it a crummy language, not your (I presume) preferred Finnish.
Similarly, I want my pages to 'speak' MSIE as long as that is the way to
reach a large part of the audience. Whether Microsoft owns, stinks or
scratches its arse too much is neither here nor there, apart from being a
nuisance we'll have to put up with for a long time yet.

 

[Andrew Thompson]

| (e-mail address removed) scribbled the following:
| > That's all very well (and you weren't the first or the only
one to take this
| > familiar but unproductive tack), but there's the small matter
of rest of the
| > world to consider: millions upon millions of MS-slaves,
.....
| So as long as the readers are owned by Microsoft, the net is
owned by
| Microsoft?

Sure Joona.

We'll all pay a (reasonable ..less than
$62/Month) fee for our access to MicroNet.

The content of which is carefully screened
by the benevolent benefactor to avoid allowing
our eyes to be assaulted by anything
pornographic, politically sensitive, or
informative.

As an extra _free_ service, the providor
will sweep our disks looking for any
'defective' old software that may be
causing problems.

Sounds fun, huh?