Getting application to work on web page

Question

I am sure this is going to seem like a dumb questions, but I
am having a heck of a time getting a flex applicaiton (.swf) file
to work on a web site. It works just fine when I run it (the
newsreader app from the documentation), but when I upload it to my
web site, I keep getting all kinds of errors saying all kinds of
files are needed, that as far as I know have nothing to do with the
app I wrote.
I followed the insturctions in the doc, and uploaded the
.html and .swf file what am I doing wrong?
thanks
John

Answer 1

1) Applets that run in web browsers used to be "hip" in at one point in the dark 1990's. That time is forever gone and good riddance. Today big enterprise applications and sophisticated special purpose desktop applications are the Right Way™ to go with Java.
If you want action in your browser, look into Macromedia's Flash technology.
If you want to deploy your application easily in an applet-like fashion (one click from a browser), look into Java Webstart.
Demos: http://java.sun.com/products/javawebstart/demos.html
Documentation: http://java.sun.com/products/javawebstart/developers.html
2) It's a trivial task to write a launcher applet for any given application so that the applet starts the application in a new window. The security restrictions imposed on applets ("sandbox") might make it impossible to use the application; for instance you cannot write or read files on the local hard drive or make network connections to other servers than where the applet was loaded from. You cannot call System.exit to quit the virtual machine.
At its simplest the lancher applet code would look ilke:public class Launcher extends java.applet.Applet {
    public void start() {
        YourApplicatioMainClass.main(null);
}and in the html you would write:<applet code="Launcher" height="1" width="1">
</applet>See the "Writing applets" tutorial for further information http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/applet/index.html