OK my latest "should be easy enough" exercise in my FP98 exam study effort that's making me pull my hair out....

I tried to use what seemed to be a well documented & very straightforward java applet for displaying a rolling slideshow of thumbnail pictures. It's freeware, but the outift it came from (http://www.codebrain.com) seemed very professional & selective with the applets they have published. It also had a high rating on some java applet download index I came across.

Problem is, it is such a cool thing that the vendor has it setup to use a "key" file. The key file is currently free. FP98 seems to have some sort of internal pathing problem though, it can find the *.class file just fine when I add the codebase="abosolute path" clause to the applet tag in my html, but it refuses to find the key. I'm ready to ditch it & find another applet to practice with, but before I do I thought I'd throw out this scenario & see if anybody had any ideas.

For reference, my practice exercise url is http://209.35.70.149/java_stuff.htm

Here's all the ways I tried to make this sucker work (and for the record, it came with 3 demos that worked both local and when published local to my Win95 PWS test web & published physically on RoxWorld space separate from my real web)

I coded it directly in my HTML, exactly as shown. (both as an Insert HTML component and as a Java Applet component as far as the FP98 UI is concerned. I put all the files in the same location as the html file, and it didnt work (local unpublished preview, local published, and real website published)

Same as above, but with the codebase clause added and a relative URL like FP98 examples show. NADA!!!

Same as the first attempt with absolute URL. It finds the class but not the key. The applet runs (both unpublished & published) but behind a black box with stupid message about missing notice & key. (notice is first param just like instructed)

Different approach - I moved the applet & all associated files to a separate folder & html file to do the include file approach. This works great unpublished! Published... it still can't kind the key file. Did it with both with relative & absolute urls, only the absolute url seems to work locally (unpublished).

Frustration sets in - I tried all of the above approaches again, several times. Plus put copies of my *.class and *.key files in multiple places. Also tried all of the above setting it up to find the java class and key in the default _fpclass folder (like the FP components do it) and still NADA when published.

The only thing that semi-works is the include file approach, with absolute urls and the separte html file, *.class, & *.key file in it's own separate folder. But only unpublished, once published it can't find the key. Even if I bring up the include file separately from the host html file.

The only thing that seems to be different coding wise from my attempts and the vendor's website example (http://www.codebrain.com/java/codebrainslider/index.html) is that in their the html header they have the following tag that I never seen with a SRC clause before:

< script LANGUAGE="JavaScript" SRC="../../scripts/general_ops.js" >

I also tried this ../ and ../../ aproach with my relative urls in codebase clause and still NADA. Major disappointment here... not too sure I'm keen on java applets thanks to this =D(

Any thoughts other than ditch this applet & find another slide show thingy that doesn't need a key file to play with? TIA!