Dear list, So quietly hardly anyone noticed, jdk1.3.1_01a appeared at
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3.1/ along with the news that Netscape 6.1 is available. The big news with _01a is that browsers equipped with its RE now can run applets from (unconverted) <APPLET tags. I stripped out all references to Java on my hard drive this morning and installed NS6.1, the jdk1.3.1_01a, and J3D on top of that. Eventually it worked on all of the Java 2 demo applets, the Java 3D demo applets (on either the raw or the _plugin converted html files), my 1.0 legacy applets, and my current ones that had been giving me fits. This has been a long hard road, and I applaud Sun's commitment and expertise. THIS IS ONE NIFTY PIECE OF WORK. I'm so happy about this that tomorrow, I'm going to start stripping out all of my converted html. Let anyone who wants to browse my site install _01a. It'll be a shock for everyone to return to the good old days, but let's get it over with. The 'eventually' mentioned above included about a full day's worth of false starts, security exceptions, failure to find files and classes, but they all gradually faded away after repeated reboots. I might have shuffled some *.properties files around in response to cryptic exceptions, so I suppose I should go back and blitz them. If I were going to redo the whole process, I think I'd do the following: - I'd load Netscape 6.1 without Java2 support. I loaded it with its own support and I ended up with two JREs. I fixed it by removing from the jdk and the Javasoft/JRE all I could in an orderly way, deleting the files and directories I couldn't, and reinstalling the jdk. - For the first time I can remember, the jdk installation properly installed the JRE, and I didn't have to install that separately. - The Java 3D installer seemed to know exactly what to do. - I'd reboot after every install. As far as I'm concerned the W2k registry is a malevolent living thing that's best humored. - I'd worry a lot less about the inscrutable error and exception messages. I'd just reboot. I wouldn't rely on Netscape yet. There were a lot of dodgey things going on - hangups and Ctrl-Alt-Dels - that may be Netscape's fault. Some of the problems seemed to happen after drag and droping an html file into it. Starting tomorrow, I'll pay more attention. SUN RULES! Fred Klingener Brock Engineering =========================================================================== To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "signoff JAVA3D-INTEREST". For general help, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "help".
