A Hands-On Example

This hands-on example describes the necessary three steps to create a JavaView enhanced web page which displays a geometry model in a small window allowing interactive modifications.

1. Insert a Java applet tag into a web document myPage.html referring to a geometry model brezel.obj.
2. Get the archive javaview.jar from the JavaView homepage.
3. Upload all three files to a web server.

The sample applet tag somewhere inside the document myPage.html looks as follows:

<applet code="javaview.class"
        archive="javaview.jar"
        width="200" height="200">
   <param name="model" value="brezel.obj">
</applet>
      

This applet visualizes the geometry model inside a small window of 200*200 pixels on the web page. The model need not be a geometry file on a local computer but the model parameter may be any internet address referring to a model on an arbitrary web server.

This example stresses the fact that the installation of the JavaView software is no longer an issue compared to the installation process of other software. The browser keeps care to download the required Java archive when it encounters the archive parameter inside the applet tag. The browser also ensures that the archive is downloaded only during first usage, and later reuses the version it has stored in the browser cache.

The easy download mechanism is especially useful for library servers offering Java enhanced electronic publications. The digital article and the JavaView archive are both stored, for example, in the same directory on the library server. The files must be uploaded by the author as described above, and are automatically downloaded by a browser when a user accesses the web page. Therefore, the librarian has no additional duties related with software installation. The library must only offer the usual upload mechanism for documents which it has already installed.

For more information see here.