ICE Browser - Release Notes

Programmers documentation and tutorial is available HERE.

The ICE Browser is an embeddable HTML browser for applications. It is a highly customisable and extensible HTML browser with full support for the HTML language (HTML 3.2). It can be used for HTML based help systems embedded in JAVA applications. It can also be easily extended so that it can function as a fully fledged WEB browser and be incorporated into existing applications as a "browser in a window".

ICE Browser can be incorporated into other JavaBean compliant applications, and can also import other JavaBeans in a transparent manner. This makes ICE Browser into a superior tool for

On-line help window
Embedded WEB Browser window
User interface building
Integration of user interfaces from many applications

ICE Browser is lightweight

ICE Browser is lightweight and is designed for embedding in existing or new applications. The jar file for the ICE Browser bean is a mere 120 kilobytes. All of the HTML 3.2 standard is implemented.

Features

HTML 3.2 compliant
Tables.
Frames.
HTTP Authentication.
Applets.
- Applet communication between web pages using ICE Connect.
- Variable repository.
- Passing of objects between applets.
- Persistence of variable repository between sessions.
Forms.
Forgiving HTML Parser.
Printer support.
Java archive (JAR) format support.
- JAR archives for use in <APPLET> tag.
- JAR files as content resources, access a JAR file URL and retrieve all resources as if from a web site.
Superb scrolling performance.
Client side image maps.
Multithreaded for asynchronous loading and parsing of documents.
Asynchronous image and applet loading.
Persistence - serializes current state..
Background images.
Document history.
Lightweight (only 120kb).
Fast rendering!

Improvements available in version 4.0

Version 4.0 is a new major version. It is the result of a major overhaul of the code. Many classes are changed, and some methods are deprecated. Main Improvements:

Browser class is no longer a container. It is much simplified and extends Document.
Cache management overhauled, cache limit implemented.
Optional ScrollPane for rendering. This introduces all of the bugs that ScrollPane has to offer at your option, but it does allow for smooth scrolling of Applets, and future compatibility with PJava.
Document objects are re-used, giving less problems due to random crashes from AWT bugs when adding/removing containers.
Document class is now a JavaBean in addition to Browser, for use as a pure HTML rendering engine.
<FRAME> document rendering faster.
Listeners for document and mouse events.

Known Problems with and limitations with Version 4.0

With the current v4.0 beta, we know about the following, and we're working on improvements:

The programmers and API documentation needs improving.
The Document.htmlAppend() moethods do not appear to work correctly in all cases.
Tables are sometimes rendered incorrectly.

Supports HTML 3.2 (without any Netscape or Microsoft extensions) with following exceptions:

The following tags are not implemented or are ignored:
- Header:
  - <HEAD></HEAD> - they can be ommited (in accordance with the 3.2 specs)
  - <ISINDEX> - primitive form for keyword search
  - <SCRIPT></SCRIPT> - placeholder in 3.2
  - <STYLE></STYLE> - placeholder in 3.2. LI>
  - <META>
  - <LINK>
- Body of the document, the stated attributes are ignored in these tags:
  - <BODY VLINK="#$$$$$$" ALINK="#$$$$$$"> - visited/active links
  - <TD NOWRAP> <TH NOWRAP> - no text wrap in a table cell
  - <XMP><LISTING><PLAINTEXT> - obsolete tags (use <PRE> instead)
  - <A REL="URL" REV="URL"> - forward/backward relation
  - <A TITLE="***"> - advisory title
  - <IMG ALT="***" BORDER=?> - text, border around image (if link)
  - <APPLET ALT="***"> - the browser is WRITTEN in Java. The alternative text is ignored.
  - <FONT FACE=***,***,...> - set font face (not part of 3.2 specification).
  - <BASEFONT SIZE=?>
  - <AREA SHAPE=POLY COORDS=?,?,?,?...> - polygonal shape in imagemap
Applets and AWT components (for FORMS) flash during documentscrolling.
The on-line demo requires a Java 1.1 compliant browser.
ICE Browser is not compatible with Java version 1.02. It is virtually impossible to provide backward compatibility since versions eralier than 1.1 do not know about Java Beans

Installing ICE Browser

ICE Browser is distributed as a "zip" file. Inside the zip file you will find release notes, these installation instructions, source code (if you purchased it) and the ICE Browser Java Archive (jar) file. Simply extract the zip file with for example unzip, winzip or 'jar xvf icefree.zip'. Once you have extracted the zip file, the best way to use ICE Browser is to place the full filename of the JAR file in your CLASSPATH. Unix (csh) users would for example do the following:

setenv CLASSPATH (your path)/icebrowserbean.jar:
java ice.htmlbrowser.Browser

Look in the examples directory to see how to use ICE Browser. If you have a "Bean aware" tool including BeanBox, you can just load the jar file in there directly and start using it.

ICEsoft AS - icesoft@icesoft.no