``...the one thing i had difficulty with was getting the JVM integrated into mozilla. your experience with netscape is encouraging! i would be using it mostly for web applets, since i am too old to be programming in java ...'' ravi
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Hey, I am 61,000 yrs old so nobody is too old. But the issue of integration is a little strange. I had to explicitly write in the path to the java `bin' directory in my HOME .profile like this:
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/bin:
/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/local/linux-sun-jdk1.3.1/bin: <====
$HOME/bin; export PATH
along with these in the .profile set ENV section:
export JAVA_HOME="/usr/local/linux-sun-jdk1.3.1" export NPX_PLUGIN_PATH="/usr/local/linux-sun-jdk1.3.1/jre/plugin/i386/ns4"
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Notice the last one NPX_PLUGIN_PATH. This tells Netscape where to find the `javaplugin.so' file. It's some kind of plugin library or other that's needed to run java inside Netscape. It must be needed to execute something because the permissions are set 775 or rwx, rwx, r-x for (owner root), (group wheel) and (others) respectively.
At a guess, this javaplugin.so file is part of the necessary machinery to get browsers to execute java `class' files in a jvm (i.e compiled java programs, aka applets).
Setting this up to work on a web site is beyond me at the moment. Currently, my version of Netscape will crash if it tries to execute some website applets, but I've never figured out which ones to stay away from. If the browser crashes I don't go there. For example going to the Sun site that explains how to install javaplugin.so crashes my browser (naturally). So I had to find the installation notes somewhere else.
I also don't know if any of this is an accurate perception of what is going on between browsers, websites and java. I might be waay off base.
If it's the case that the jvm is indeed integrated into the browser as a plugin, then look around for various versions of this `javaplugin.so' file. Sun is very cagey about all this shit.
Anyway looking around a little, try some of this:
http://www.tux.org/pub/java/JDK-1.4.1/i386/beta/INSTALL-j2sdk
where you will find this:
* Mozilla / Netscape 7
Create a symbolic link from
<Java2 SDK installation>/jre/plugin/<ARCH>/mozilla/javaplugin_oji.so to
one of the directories Mozilla/Netscape 7 searches for plug-ins.
E.g.
% ln -s /usr/local/j2sdk1.4.1/jre/plugin/i386/mozilla/javaplugin_oji.so \
~/mozilla-1.0/plugins/
or
% su # become root
% ln -s /usr/local/j2sdk1.4.1/jre/plugin/i386/mozilla/javaplugin_oji.so \
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/
Note: It has to be a symbolic link, copying javaplugin.so will NOT work
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Then in the next section they describe Java Web Start... Maybe something there will help.
(Life is too short? Ignore the grouchy old guy with the one button mouse. His wife is much nicer.)
CG