APPLETS & APPLET Tags and Specifying Parameters

[sukishan]

An applet is a program written in the Java programming language that can be included in an HTML page, much in the same way an image is included in a page. When you use a Java technology-enabled browser to view a page that contains an applet, the applet's code is transferred to your system and executed by the browser's Java Virtual Machine (JVM). For information and examples on how to include an applet in an HTML page, refer to this description of the <APPLET> tag.

Using the APPLET Tag
This section tells you most of what you need to know to use the <APPLET> tag. It starts by showing you the tag's simplest form. It then discusses some of the most common additions to that simple form: the <PARAM> tag, alternate HTML code and text, the CODEBASE attribute, and the ARCHIVE attribute. For a detailed description of the <APPLET> tag, refer to Using the applet Tag.
You should already have seen the simplest form of the <APPLET> tag:

<APPLET CODE=AppletSubclass.class WIDTH=anInt HEIGHT=anInt>
</APPLET>

This tag tells the browser to load the applet whose Applet subclass is named AppletSubclass, displaying it in an area of the specified width and height.

Specifying Parameters
Some applets let the user customize the applet's configuration with parameters, as described in Defining and Using Applet Parameters. For example, AppletButton (an applet used throughout this tutorial to provide a button that brings up a window) allows the user to set the button's text by specifying the value of a parameter named BUTTONTEXT.
The developer provides the value of a parameter using a <PARAM> tag. The <PARAM> tags should appear just after the <APPLET> tag for the applet they affect:

<APPLET CODE=AppletSubclass.class WIDTH=anInt HEIGHT=anInt>
<PARAM NAME=parameter1Name VALUE=aValue>
<PARAM NAME=parameter2Name VALUE=anotherValue>
</APPLET>

Here's an example of the <PARAM> tag in use.

<APPLET CODE="Animator.class" WIDTH=460 HEIGHT=160>
<PARAM NAME="imageSource" VALUE="images/Beans">
<PARAM NAME="backgroundColor" VALUE="0xc0c0c0">
<PARAM NAME="endImage" VALUE=10>
<PARAM NAME="soundSource" VALUE="audio">
<PARAM NAME="soundtrack" VALUE="spacemusic.au">
<PARAM NAME="sounds"
    VALUE="1.au|2.au|3.au|4.au|5.au|6.au|7.au|8au|9.au|0.au">
<PARAM NAME="pause" VALUE=200>
. . .
</APPLET>