Communication between applet and Web app (IE6 works IE7 doesn't)

Question

I'm not 100% sure this is the correct forum to post this in, but as the communication is initiated from the applet I'm posting it here.
I have an applet that we are slowly breaking pieces out of into a web app.
The details are as follows.
The applet calls a servlet on the webserver with the following code.
URL url = new URL("http://.................");
ServletMessage message = new ServletMessage(url);
InputStream returnStream = message.sendPostMessage(sending);The servlet takes the user credentials and other info that was sent and authenticates the user and stores the info that was passed into the session on the web server. Then based on the users permissions and where they want to go in the web app the servlets redirect method calls
resp.getOutputStream().print("/AppName/appropriateServlet");This sends control back to the applet (including the url of the servlet that needs to be called) which then calls the appropriate servlet
container.getAppletContext().showDocument(new URL("http://.............." + returnURL), "Title");Now the problem is that in the first and second servlet the request.getSession() returns two different sessions when running under IE7. IE6 returns reference to the same session.
I don't know what has changed in IE7 but I was hoping somebody else has run into this, or can suggest a more appropriate forum to post this to?
Thanks

Answer 1

So the solution I came up with was when the applet jumps to the web app the first time instead of storing everything in session I store them in a map in the servletContext under their employee number.
I then send control back to the applet with the url they should call. When the applet calls the web app for the second time it includes their employee number as parameter in the url.
A Login filter then first checks to make sure it isn't on the first call, and checks to make sure they aren't in session... if so it pulls the map out of servletContext and transfers all the data back to the session and clears that user out of servletContext.
So it stores the user in the servletContext during the transfer back and forth, then back in session like normal.
I'm pretty sure it is going to work, but I can't test it because our mainframe test region is down which is what handles the authentication of the applet.