Opening a web page in an applet

Question

Some may recognize this as I have posted it before and got nowhere. So I decided to post it again to see if anybody could help me. I have made a few changes to my code, but no guarantees it's better.
public class FinalWindow extends Applet
     private AppletContext appContext;
     public void init()
          java.net.URL url;
          appContext = this.getAppletContext();
          try
               url = new java.net.URL("http://www.google.com");
          } catch (Exception e)
             System.out.println("Didn't work.");
             url = null;
        System.out.println("this");
        try
        if(url != null)
             getAppletContext().showDocument(url, "_self");
               //appContext.showDocument(url, "_self");
        } catch (Exception e)
             System.out.println("Error loading page.");
     public static void main(String[] args)
          FinalWindow fw = new FinalWindow();
          fw.init();
}I have to things that i tried to use to show the web page in the applet, but they both produce NPE saying:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
    at java.applet.Applet.getAppletContext(Applet.java:187)
    at FinalWindow.init(FinalWindow.java:84)
    at FinalWindow.main(FinalWindow.java:107)Let me know what ya'll think.

Answer 1

wythe25 wrote:
No, I don't want the page to load in the browser window, I want it to load in the applet, as I said before.Your showDocument commands above would result in the target page replacing the page the applet is in, rather than opening the target page inside the applet.
To load a document inside the applet, might be achieved by using a JEditorPane to contain the HTML, then simply calling JEP.setPage(URL). Two things about that though:
1) An applet will need to be trusted in order to load documetns from foreign hosts.
2) Google frowns upon people reading their pages into any bot or software other than a standard browser.
I defined the main() method because that is the way I know how to do it. I'm not worried about having a main() in it right now. You should be. Combined applet/applications do make some sense during development - I do them quite often. But you need to realise that an applet launched that way will not be able to use the kind of things an embedded applet can normally expect to be able to access, such as the AppletContext. (1)
..I just can't figure out how to load a web page in an applet.
Basically making a web browser out of an applet that loads the page I tell it to in the code.JEditorPane (with a HyperlinkListener), trusted applet, not Google. And in fact, though the JEP is getting better over time, it is not generally considered to be good enough to use as the basis for a 'real world (wild web)' browsing component.
Edit 1:
(1) Having implemented a basic AppletContext for Appleteer , I can tell you it is not trivial!
Also, that code above was just one line short (the import for the applet package) of being an SSCCE *(<- link).* Please consider posting SSCCEs in future - you get better chance of help, faster.
Edited by: AndrewThompson64 on Nov 13, 2009 1:42 PM