Setting up a Web Server

In the context of the Java Tutorial as a whole, the topic of Applets is a major section in the Deployment trail. It is preceded by another largish section Java Web Start. This promises "to launch full-featured applications with a single click". At this stage all I want to do is to launch my mini app with a single click, so I really don't want to get bogged with detail here.

But I am not optimistic. The second paragraph refers to a JNLP file, whatever that is. My hopes of a "quick" start are fading. It looks as if there is a lot to work through. And if you follow the thread in order, the first lesson, Running Java Web Start Applications, is interesting from the perspective of trying out the technology, but from my perspective useless right now, because it assumes the JNLP file already exists.

The second lesson, Deploying Java Web Start Applications, looks more hopeful but it contains a number of potentially quite tricky steps. And in the lesson the first of these, Setting up the Web Server, is as useful as the proverbial mammary gland on the male of a bovine species. I guess this is a Java tutorial not a website management tutorial, but as they provided detailed instructions on running that silly Hello World app on three different operating systems, They might have put at least some sort of link here.

I have set up a web server on Win2k, but it was a long time ago and I am rather rusty. A quick search reminds me I have to install Microsoft's Internet Information Service (IIS) using the Control Panel. But I now have XP SP3 installed and my Windows CD is only SP2. The problem I encounter is similar to this one (except that for me everything translates as SP3 not 2). To fix it apparently I have to slipstream XP3 into a new CD. What a bore. I so hope MS goes broke or falls into obscurity in my lifetime. The simplest task is always a bloody nightmare. Why do I still use them? Because I have yet to install a Linux distro that does everything for me. One day I might start a Linux blog, because I've certainly wasted a few hours fiddling around with it. Anyway, slipstreaming is a chore, but it's not that hard. My reference point for the task is a web site called theeldergeek. His page on slipstreaming SP3 is here.

An important ingredient is the network professionals version of SP3. It is a 316MB file, but do MS offer you a bit torrent option? No, that would be too sensible. So I have to go to thepiratebay to get a perfectly legal file. The download could be dodgy, it could wreck my computer, or it could simply not work. But the size looks exactly right, so I'll start to bring it in with Azureus. There seem to be lots of seeds and it's coming in quite fast, but it will take a few hours, so I'll continue tomorrow.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A few notes on JavaScript

I am one the 99% of the world who has long nursed the misconception that JavaScript has something to do with Java. And why not? The name sort of implies it. It was only after I searched without success on the Java Tutorial site for some mention of JavaScript that I stumbled across the knowledge that JavaScript was in fact developed by Netscape, under the name LiveScript. Armed with that knowledge, it is not surprising to find the best reference information on Mozilla site. According to Wikipedia , the nonsensical name choice had something to do with Netscape wanting to cash in on the popularity and cachet of Java, and Sun wanting support for Java technology in the then popular Netscape browser. For a while only the Netscape family of browsers supported JavaScript. Microsoft later produced what it calls JScript to run in its browser. JScript is similar but not identical to Javascript. According to Foldoc JavaScript runs a hundred times slower than C , and ten
Read more

Forum Comments on Java Applets

It is so long since I last posted on the once was Sun/Java now is Oracle developer forum my account seems to have been ditched. While I wait to have it resurrected I've done a little searching in the Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) forum using the search term "Applet". My first search, using the default 3 month period, yielded nothing. No one had posted anything about or even mentioned Applets in the last three months. So either they are very easy to use and work very well, so hardly anyone has any problems with them, or maybe ... not very many people use them at all. My stomach was beginning to churn a bit, when I extended the search period to the current year - and with good reason. Somebody, a little bit like me I think, had written a game in an applet, and wanted to record top scores in a database. He described his connection problem in this thread , and the first reply began: Doing JDBC calls from an Applet is such a bad idea that I am glad y
Read more

Creating a Custom Swing Component

Image
I always return to my blog when I'm stuck, and I'm stuck right now. I want to create a custom Swing component. Specifically, I want something like a JProgressBar , with the following changes: In place of a flat Foreground color, I want a rainbow spectrum, showing only the red range for low Values, and the whole spectrum for values close to the Maximum value; Instead of a rectangular box, I want the progress "bar" to take the shape of a normal, or Gaussian, distribution curve; I want progress to be displayed by the area under the curve, rather than by a simple linear scale along the x axis. It's not that there isn't stuff out there. I have five tabs open in my browser, specifically addressing the creation of custom components in Swing, as well as the source code for the JProgressBar . It is that, like everything to do with Java, it is bloody difficult to read. I shall begin from the horse's mouth as it were, with an article on the Java
Read more