A simple applet that just won't work

Question

I'm sorta new to applets...
anyways, I'm trying to instatiate a string in the public void init() method, and pass the string variable to the paint(graphics g) method. for some reason, I can't do this. silly applets (or silly me).
Can anyone clear this up for me?
I've got another problem reading parameters from a html file and printing those too, but I'm thinking that solving the first problem will solve this problem also.
Here is my code:
import java.applet.Applet;
import java.awt.Graphics;
public class HelloWorld extends Applet {
     private String myString;
     private String userName;
       public void paint(Graphics g) {
            g.drawString(userName, 150,150);
            g.drawString(myString, 10,10);
        public String appletInfo() {
         String appletInfo = new String("Mark Dojlida");
         return appletInfo;
        public void init() {
              userName = getParameter("username");
              String myString = "Print this, dammit";
}

Answer 1

Since you already declared myString as a string at the top, you do NOT need to re-declare it as a string in init(). Just putting myString="print this dammit"; is enough. If you put String myString="print this dammit" in init(), then that is re-creating the string, but since it is declared in a method, ONLY init() would be able to use it, and you would get a null pointer exception if you tried to use it in paint (or anywhere else besides init).