In general, help is text the user can request to
help her understand a program. Context sensitive help tries to guess just what
questions the user would be asking herself at that particular stage of the
program. Java documentation and help tends to be based on HTML files.
Help with Applets
You probably came here to get help because one of the Canadian Mind Products
utilities, Applets or web pages did not work for you. Here are the most likely
problems:
- If you are using Internet Explorer 7+ you must allow blocked content
permission for Active X to run. This also gives permission to Java to run.
- You need a very recent browser because this website depends on CSS 2 which is
not even fully supported by the latest browsers.
Get New Browser
- Each program is labelled with the version of Java it requires. However, I use
only the latest Java myself, JDK 1.6.0_17.
This is the only version I test with. It is the version with the best chance of
working. The CurrCon currency displays requires Java 1.1+. The JDisplay program
listings requires Java 1.2+. Just install the
latest Java and be done with it! You can keep the old version too if you
like, just make sure your browser is configured to us the latest one when you
browse this website. You can find what version Java you are using with the Wassup
Applet. Why so much Java? This website is primarily about Java. I wanted to
show off what you can do with it.
Get New Java
- After you have installed the latest Java, you should test
it to make sure it is working.
Test Java
- For help getting the console visible so you can see error messages:
Engage Console
- For help with individual browsers see:
Help with Signed Applets and Java Web Start Apps
- When you use a signed Applet or signed Java Web Start application, sometimes
Windows hides the dialog box where you give permission for the program to run.
Hit alt-Esc repeatedly to see if the grant/accept
dialog box is buried under something else.
- Signed Applets need your permission to break out of the sandbox and behave like
ordinary programs to do things like read and write disk or talk to arbitrary
servers on the web, or set your clock. They will behave very strangely if you
refuse that permission. Different browsers ask permission various strange ways,
but usually you have to click a button marked :
accept or grant.
Installing the Canadian Mindprod Certificate
If you want to reduce hassle with signed Applets, you can once and for all
install the Canadian Mind Products code-signing certificate and mark it is as
trustworthy. All you have to do is click the button below:
install
certificate
If that does not work, you can download the certificate and install it manually
per the instructions under keytool.
Help With Java Web Start
- Java Web Start won’t work until you set up an association between the *.jnlp
files (MIME application/x-java-jnlp-file) and javaws.exe
both in Windows and your browser. Both Sun and the browser makers have refused
to do this automatically. Growl!
-
- For help getting the Java Web Start (JWS) working:
Repair Java Web Start
Brute Force JWS
If you can’t get your browser to work with JWS (Java Web
Start) just save the *.jnlp
file to disk and run it from the command line with something like:
The Windows Help Bug
With Vista, Microsoft dropped support for the old .hlp
Windows help files. They wanted authors to convert their programs to the new
Vista .chm format and issue new Vista versions. Most
authors did not bother and help for old programs stopped working in Vista.
It was a bold planned obsolescence move, though they protest the motive was
security. I am doubtful. They could have changed the help viewer to disable any
potentially dangerous feature.
So what do you do? You can ask the author to provide a Vista version, or you can
convert the .hlp files yourself to either .chh,
.html, .pdf etc. (19
different formats) using an inexpensive Ambersoft
ABC program. Ambersoft has many variants on their utilities. Make sure you
read the fine print before you select. Unfortunately, the new help won’t
be integrated with the program to pop up in a context sensitive way. I could not
get Microsoft’s recommended kludge to work.
Please email your feedback for publication, errors, omissions, typos, formatting errors, ambiguities, unclear wording, broken/redirected link reports, suggestions to improve this page or comments to
Roedy Green :
