Place to put swing.jar to enable Swing for IE?

Question

I know I can extend the JVM in Netscape 4.7, or any of the JRE's from Sun by sticking extra JAR files into the lib/ext directory. Is there a similar place to do so to extend the Microsoft JVM for IE. Specifically, I want to do that for Swing. I know it's possible to put the swing classes I might need into a JAR file and add it to my applet download, but I'm hoping there is a way to install it into the Microsoft JVM.
Did Micro$oft avoid having a simple directory that class files or JAR files could be placed to extend the browser JVM?
Thanks,
Harold Shinsato

Answer 1

If you are forced to use the microsoft's virtual machine, you could try this solution:
(Everything is documented in the ms sdk for java docs)
Download the microsoft's sdk for java, unjar the file swing.jar, then use the dubuild tool to make a cab file, the command would be something like this:
dubuild filename.cab . /D "My Classes" /I *.class /V 1,0,0,0
The resulting cab file will have the half of the size that the original jar,
Then you have to change the applet tag:
<APPLET code="package.classname.class" width=342 height=390>
<PARAM name="cabbase" value="filename.cab" />
<applet />
Optionally you can use a feature in IE, that allows you to install classes in the user's computer.
First you must get a certificate, you can generate tests certificates using the tool makecert included in the ms sdk for java, it would be something like this:
C:\..\>makecert -sk MyKeyName -n "CN=My Publisher Name" MyTestCert.cer
C:\..\>cert2spc MyTestCert.cer MyTestCert.spc
C:\..\>signcode -j javasign.dll -jp medium -spc MyTestCert.spc
-k MyKeyName filename.cab
the parameter after -jp is the level of security if you change medium for low you get full permissions.
Again you need to change the applet tag:
<APPLET code="package.classame.class" width=342 height=390 >
<PARAM name="cabbase" value="filename.cab" />
<PARAM NAME=useslibrary VALUE="My Classes">
<PARAM NAME=useslibrarycodebase VALUE="filename.cab">
<PARAM NAME=useslibraryversion VALUE="1,0,0,0">
</Applet>
This will cause the user see a warning window when he watch the page, he will be asked for authorization to download and install software to his computer, if the user agrees the cab file filename.cab is copied to %winnt%\downloaded program files and acording to the documentation when he sees the page again he would not have to download all the files again.
As IE installs the files I think that is more easy for the unexperienced user that open the winnt dir search for the java folder and copy the classes by hand