HTML and JAVA Directory Help

The HotMedia toolkit generates HotMedia objects (.mvr files) as well as sample HTML files to view these. Within the generated HTML sample code is the applet tag.

There are many ways to include the HotMedia objects into a broader HTML document. One way is to cut and paste the applet tag into some other document.

Authors should be aware of the target environment when publishing HotMedia objects to directories outside of the authoring tool defaults.

If you are not familiar with JAVA and how JAVA clients find the necessary class files, you may want to begin your authoring experience by publishing to the default directory.

If you are familair with JAVA and have a target site design, it is suggested that you copy the HotMedia class files to your target site before publishing the HotMedia objects.

The authoring tool attempts to locate the class files and create applet tags pointing appropriately. For instance, if you create test1 and store it in the default directory, the test1.html file will have the following:

<APPLET CODEBASE=".." 

	CODE="hm.class" 

	NAME="HotMedia" 

	WIDTH=320 

	HEIGHT=200>  

<PARAM NAME="mvrfile" value="data/test1.mvr">

</APPLET> 

This assumes a directory structure of:

and the data stored in the data directory. (Class files are in the hm directory.) You can place the published hm (.mvr) files in any directory and the class files in any directory, but the applet tags must reflect the directory hierarchy properly.

It is beyond the scope of this document to discuss fully how JAVA interprets CODEBASE and other parameters, However, the following comments may be helpful.

CODEBASE specifies an absolute URL reference to the class files, or specifies a relative location (relative with respect to the html page) of hm.class. The location of the mvr file is relative to the CODEBASE, but down the directory hierarchy because of Java security constraints that are exhibited by most browsers.

When generating the CODEBASE for the html page, the hotmedia.exe authoring tool first checks to see if the hm.class files are at the same location as the published html and mvr page:

• If so, hotmedia.exe omits the CODEBASE parameter (uses the default CODEBASE=".").
• If hotmedia.exe cannot find it, it attempts to search for hm.class in the Windows CLASSPATH.
• If hotmedia.exe cannot find hm.class in the CLASSPATH, hotmedia.exe attempts to search for hm.class in each branch up the directory structure.
• If none of these attempts is successful, the default settings are assumed. More examples are described in the Java Player User Guide's section Example HTML Code.