When Paul first started the Gunship editor in Java, we thought that one of the fringe benefits would be that it could be run as an applet right from Netscape, eliminating the need for any installation.
It turned out to be much more complicated than that. Here is what happened:
The Gunship Editor uses JDK 1.1.4. I don't want to get into why it was that we needed to use calls from this version of the JDK. Let's just say that it was necessary. Besides, it seemed to make sense at the time. While Netscape did not ship with 1.1.4 support when development was started, Netscape claimed that it would be standard soon. Besides, Netscape offered an easy way to upgrade your browser to support 1.1.4.
That's why if you have Netscape 4.03 or 4.04 for 95/NT, or you have Netscape 4.03p2 or 4.04 for Unix, you can install a simple upgrade that provides 1.1.4 support and lets you run our applet.
However, then came version 4.05. Netscape, having concluded that making people update the version of the JDK was silly, decided not to do that any more. Unfortunately, they couldn't simply release 4.05 with JDK 1.1.4, because it turns out that they broke some things in 1.1.4, and now some old applets don't work. Let me know the minute this starts to sound stupid to you, too. Anyway, the normal version of 4.05 does not support JDK 1.1.4, and cannot be upgraded. Instead there is another full version of 4.05 WITH JDK 1.1.4, available from the developer website here.
So, here is the summary:
You need to have a version of
Netscape that supports JDK 1.1.4. Go to the JDK
1.1.4 web site to find out how to accomplish this. You may
be able to update your current version, or you may need to
download another version of Netscape entirely.
The one
platform that is not covered on that site is the Mac. You need
to be running MRJ
2.0 from Apple.
Sorry about this mess. We'll try to keep all the answers posted here as Netscape comes up with even more innovative ways to make using Java vexingly confusing.