Java Rich Internet Applications Guide > Enhancements and Other Features > Special Applet Attributes
Applets have default attributes associated with them. Special
attributes like image
and boxmessage
can be associated with applets
and used for customizing the applet window during downloading of an
applet. JavaBeans component can also be customized using these
special attributes.
The following topics are covered:
The default appearence of a Applet when no special attributes are used is as follows:
image
The image
attribute allows you to replace the
default animation with a custom graphic. The format with the
standard applet
element is:
<applet ...> <param name="image" value="my_image.gif"> </applet>
See Using applet
,
object
and embed
Tags in Java Plug-in
for how this would be mapped to the object
or the
embed
tags.
If a custom graphic is specified, it should be the same size as
the area of the applet window. If these sizes do not match, the
graphic will be placed in the upper left corner of the area
specified for applet. If it is larger than the applet window, part
of it will get chopped off. If it is smaller than the applet
window, white, or whatever color is specified for
boxbgcolor
, will appear around it.
The image can be either a GIF or JPEG, and it should reside in
the same directory where other resources for the applet reside;
i.e., if the applet uses the codebase
attribute, then
this image should be in the codebase
directory.
Note: The image file should not be in a packaged jar file with other applet resources, since the image needs to be displayed while downloading resources.
The status bar of the browser will display "Loading Java
Applet ...
" when the mouse is pointed at the applet
window.
boxmessage
With the boxmessage
attribute you can customize the
text displayed in the status bar of the browser. This attribute
will be in effect when image
attribute is used. The
format for using this with the standard APPLET
element
is:
<APPLET ...> <PARAM name="boxmessage" value="<your custom message goes here>"> </APPLET>
boxbgcolor,
boxfgcolor
These attributes can be used to customize colors in the applet window.
These attributes will be in effect when the image
attribute is used. Custom colors cannot be specified for the
default appearance of the applet viewing area.
By default the applet window background color is white. The
attribute boxbgcolor
can be used to specify a
different background color. The format for use with the standard
APPLET
element is:
<APPLET ...> <PARAM name="boxbgcolor" value="<value>"> </APPLET>
where <value>
may be:
Color
from java.awt.Color
;r,g,b
where r
, g
, and
b
are integers in the range of 0-255
that
would render an opaque standard RGB (sRGB) color in the
Color
constructor Color(int r, int g, int
b)
;Examples of each item above:
value="cyan"
,
value="111,222,145"
,
value="silver"
,
value="#33FF33"
By default the applet window foreground color is black. The
attribute boxfgcolor
can be used to specify a
different foreground color. The color values are the same as
described above. The format for use with the standard
APPLET
element is:
<APPLET ...> <PARAM name="boxfgcolor" value="<value>"> </APPLET>
The order of precedence for these attributes in applets is as follows:
1) If no parameters are provided, the default
appearance described above is used.
2) If a custom graphic is specified via the image
attribute, then the custom graphic will appear as described above
under image
.
3) If custom text is provided via the boxmessage
attribute, then custom text will be displayed as described above
under boxmessage
.
With any combination of image
and
boxmessage
attributes, custom colors can always be
provided via the boxbgcolor
and
boxfgcolor
attributes.
If an applet fails to load the following actions are performed:
The user can click in the applet window to get a popup menu to open one of the following options: