Slow applet--HELP!

Question

My entire project has skidded to a halt because of this problem, so I need help right away!
The problem:
A very simple applet is running very slowly. All it does is display a custom component.
How can I speed it up without losing encapsulation?
public class ArrowTest extends Applet{
   Arrow a = new Arrow();
   add(a);
}The component is a lightweight custom component, which is also very simple. It has a anonymous listener class in its constructor (MouseMotionListener) which causes the Arrow to rotate when the mouse is clicked and dragged. (this involves lots of Math.cos, Math.sin, etc., but not THAT much) However when I dragged my mouse on the arrow's area, the rotation was slow and choppy. I would drag the mouse, and about 10 seconds later, the arrow would notice and flip right to where I ended, not showing the in-between steps.
The applet ran fine (smoothly and with a fast response) on my computer in the applet viewer. It also worked fine when I ftp'd it to my html server and ran it. It worked badly at school, which is the ultimate destination of this applet. The school's computers are not much slower than my testing computer. I know that the html servers are extremely busy/slow, but I thought that the entire applet was loaded into memory so that once it was started, the server's business was done?
Is there any case in which the applet needs to go back to the HTML server once it has loaded the applet?
I had planned to put many such arrows on the screen concurrently, and even pack it into another custom component. But if I can't even display one arrow, my entire project is on the skids.
How can I speed this up?
Can I make it such that the user has to download pieces of my applet and store it on their computer somewhere, so that I can help this slow HTML server (so that it sends less info)?
Thanks in advance!
:) jenMc

Answer 1

thank you for replying!
However, I'm not sure what you're suggesting?
The event handler, which is part of the component, calls repaint() (the component's paint and update methods). The rotation is intended to be packaged as part of the arrow's default behavior, in the same sense as a button's default behavior is such that if you click on a button you see the image of the button go "up and down". You do not assign a event handler to do this; it is part of the component. Supposedly when you do this, the applet only reloads the area within the clip bounds of the component?
I do not want to draw an arrow by calling getGraphics(). That would ruin the encapsulation. Another words, I want to add an arrow to the screen by simply saying
add(arrow);
not by having to write an arrow algorithm every time I want to use an arrow, which is most of the time, since that's my base class for Vector, Force, Acceleration, Velocity, etc. classes.
I don't want the caller to be responsible for repainting or painting or anything.
Am I totally not understanding your suggestion? If I am, please correct me.
:) Jen