Troubleshooting & Support             

Check The Obvious...

  • If you see a "class not found" message, this means what it says -- your browser can't find the .class file specified. This may mean a spelling or case mistake in the CODE= attribute, the wrong location in the CODEBASE= attribute, or that you've forgotten to copy the .class file to the necessary directory.

  • The Copyright parameter shown in all examples must be included for the applet to run. It is case sensitive, and the number of spaces between words must be identical (entirely single-spaced). If you try to run the applet and you see the message "Copyright parameter missing or incorrect", it denotes a problem with this parameter.

  • Make sure that your <APPLET> tag, closing </APPLET> tag, and all <PARAM> tags have < and > brackets. Check that the value for every parameter is enclosed between " signs.

  • If you see a NullPointerException displayed in the browser status-bar, it's most likely to be caused by a mistake in an image-based parameter. Check that paths and names of images are correct.

  • If the message 'Copyright parameter missing or incorrect' appears and the applet will not run, make sure you've included the Copyright parameter shown in the example code on the Getting Started page. This parameter is case-sensitive, single-spaced throughout, and must be copied exactly.

    Check The Browser...
    Recently the two big browser names, Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, have gone through some Java security paranoia. With certain browsers, any Java applet that tries to load an external file from your own system such as a sound, image or text file will be prevented from running. Many applets try to load sound or image files, in particular, and they certainly aren't a threat to your system's security!

    Fortunately Microsoft quickly saw sense on this issue and released a fix. If you're still using IE 3.02 or the first beta of IE4.0 (and haven't already installed the update to the Java Virtual Machine) head for www.microsoft.com/java and install it.

    If you're using Navigator 4.x, you'll be no stranger to waiting for Netscape Corp to see sense -- no fix yet exists. The only option is to prepare the page containing the applet in Internet Explorer, place all necessary files on the server, and use Navigator to open the page via HTTP for testing. Alternatively, if you're a registered user of any CodeBase applet, you can bypass this problem using ComTest, the utility you received free with the registered applet.

    Check The Documentation...
    If the applet runs, but you can't make it do what you want it to do, please take another look at the documentation. If the applet can do it, we've documented it (we're not known for keeping quiet about features!). Note that free applets are entirely unsupported: the intention is that the thorough documentation, along with working examples, should tell you all you need to know. We cannot give free support with free products.