Friday, January 09, 2009

PDF Viewer applet and Java 6 Update 10

I've spent the last few days finally getting round to updating BFO's PDF Viewer applet to take advantage of the new Java 6 Update 10 features.

It was mostly straightforward, with most of the time taken up with making the applet look and behave exactly like an application when its dragged out of the browser. We did run into a Sun bug along the way, which means that desktop icons created when you drag an applet out of the browser look crap on Vista and Ubuntu because Java takes a 32 x 32 icon and scales it up to 48 x 48, even when you provide a 48 x 48 icon.

I also used another very cool applet to create a video of the applet in action: http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/ - a JavaPosse applet of the week - provides a quick and free way to create screencast videos and host them so that anyone can watch them. Highly recommended. My screencast is here: http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cQVQeynE5

So, if you have Java 6 Update 10 or later installed then nip along to http://bfo.co.uk/products/pdf/viewer.jsp and try it out. If you want more information on how to update an applet to take advantage of the new Update 10 features then there's a blog post over at BFO detailing exactly what was involved: http://big.faceless.org/blog/2009/01/05/1231151940000.html