Known Problems (Java Embedding Plugin)

A) Java Embedding Plugin

1. Applets temporarily "flicker" or disappear completely as you scroll or resize the browser window. This is annoying, but I'm probably not going to be able to do anything about it. And in any case the problem has a positive side -- because applets aren't displayed while a page is being scrolled or resized, these operations are much quicker (on pages that contain Java applets) with the Java Embedding Plugin than they are with Safari.
2. Applet printing doesn't work. (But Mozilla.org browsers don't support applet printing on Mac OS X, either.)
3. Applets may not be fully displayed when you first load them, or may disappear (partially or completely) when you scroll or resize the browser page that contains them. This is particularly likely on older (slower) computers, with pages that contain multiple applets, and with applets whose display is clipped.

   What usually works is to resize or scroll the page again slightly, or to reload the applet.

   Over time I've tried to reduce the frequency/severity of this problem. But I'm unlikely ever to be able to eliminate it completely.

4. The Java Embedding Plugin is incompatible with Apple's JIS Keyboard (model number M9034J/A, marketed by Apple only in Japan). Once you've loaded at least one Java applet into a browser window, many JIS Keyboard functions no longer work properly in that window.

   http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=315972

   I won't be able to resolve this problem until I get hold of one of these keyboards. But Apple makes it very difficult to obtain one outside of Japan (it's not available from the US "Apple Store", and the Japan Apple Store won't ship to addresses outside of Japan). I've not yet found any way around this.

5. The Java Embedding Plugin currently won't build on Apple's forthcoming Mac OS X 10.6 (SnowLeopard).

   I hope to fix this in a future release.

6. The Java Embedding Plugin currently doesn't support user-specified Java runtime parameters on Mac OS X 10.6 (SnowLeopard).

   I hope to fix this in a future release.

B) MRJ Plugin JEP

None that I'm aware of.

C) Mozilla "Family" of Browsers

1. All versions of Mozilla.org browsers cause a large number of inappropriate updates to Java applets (either directly, or by sending update commands to the Java Embedding Plugin, via the MRJ Plugin JEP). Without my workarounds, Java applets would often be redisplayed as much as several times a second (even when not scrolling or resizing the browser window), and partially or wholly overwritten. I call this the "spurious updates" problem.

   The problem keeps getting worse (particularly with the latest Firefox alphas and nightlies). But it seems to have many different causes, so it's very difficult to pin down. The Java Embedding Plugin has long had workarounds for this set of problems. But I keep needing to revise the workarounds as new cases surface.

   To get an idea of the scale of the problem, add the following to the Java Control Panel's "Runtime Parameters", and watch the messages scroll by in the Java Console:

   -Djep.debug.updates=true

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