Applt unresponsive in Mac OS X

Question

This one is driving me nuts.
For some obscure (to me at least) reason, my swing applet is totally
unresponsive in OS X, although it works just fine in Windows. Here's
the story:
~ Original version developed over a year ago, using JBuilder. Original design was not very complicated - little user
interaction, mainly feedback text, progress bars and a cancel button.
Since the IDE lacks a GUI-creation feature, opted for GridBagLayout
mode, manually coding it. Worked perfectly well in both platforms.
~ About three weeks ago the client updated specs for the applet, and it
involved a great deal of additional GUI stuff. Refused to code that
manually, so I decided to use NetBeans (currently 6.5.1) for the new
version. Creating the new GUI was a breeze, really, and I had it up and
running in a couple of days. Everything looked nice and dandy up to
here.
~ Next day, when I tried the applet on a Mac, I hit the
no-java-1.6-for-OSX wall. Looked it up on the net and found this blog by
Jim Blackler
that explains why. Followed the directions, which involve setting
NetBeans to work with JDK 1.5, and yes, the applet showed, but the GUI
was completely distorted and it was unresponsive.
~ Great idea: download NetBeans for Mac and work from there. Long story short, the resulting applet worked perfectly well in Windows but was still unresponsive in Mac.
~ In an attempt to return to "known grounds", I changed the layout
model back to GridBag, which led to a less-than-perfect result but
still functional (in Win, that is). Tried again on the Mac and,
although the GUI looked the intended way, it was still unresponsive.
~ Suspecting a bad java install on my Mac, I tried it on another one, with
the same result. I even downloaded the newer Update 3, but there was no
change.
~ After a bit of exchange at the Apple forums, I reinstalled NetBeans for Mac and debugged the applet
with it. BTW, I went back to the GridLayout model and fixed it for Mac, and that's the version
I debugged w/NetBeans. Funny enough, the applet ran like a charm from
the IDE! In a heart-pounding minute I built/signed the jar and tried it
in Safari, just to find that the darn thing was again unresponsive. Of course, it shines in Windows.
Just to make things clear, by "unresponsive" I mean that the GUI
elements do not respond to user interaction. I know for sure the applet
is running - since the original version I included an optional Trace
window, which let me make sure that everything runs well all the way to
the start() method.
I would gladly show any code here, but the thing is I don't think
there's anything wrong with it - it runs well in Windows and the Mac NetBeans IDE. Actually I
woudn't really know what to show. I guess it must be related to some configuration issue which I'm missing.
Thanks in advance to anyone with a good idea!

Answer 1

Good morning to both, and thanks macrules2 for your post.
macrules2 wrote:
I haven't read the entire thread (I know, I'm lazy), but there is one other place that stack traces can be dumped, and it's the console located in Applications/Utilities/Console.appChecked all of the logs and no, there's nothing in them. I even re-tested the applet from Safari and checked again (there should've been new entries) and nothing. Weird, I know.
cotton.m wrote:
I realize this is an ancient source but there is an example of running a signed applet here http://java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/Programming/JDCBook/signed.html#appli I really think you want to run this in appletviewer and see what's going on, this just has to be some sort of traceable error.
After playing a bit with the settings (thanks for the link, btw) I was finally able to make it run in appletviewer from terminal... only to find out that yes, it works well, meaning no error/stack dump. Back to square one.
I think I'll follow your idea of adding things to the dumb applet I made yesterday until it fails too... Rather lengthy and boring process, but I see no other way out at this point.
I'll post whatever I find out. In the meantime, thank you so very much for your help.