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TheOutlineApplet


LICENSE

This license ("License") contains rights and restrictions associated with use of the accompanying software. Read the License carefully before utilizing the software. By using the software you agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of this license.

  1. Limited License Grant. David Griffiths ("The author") grants to you ("Licensee") a nonexclusive, nontransferable, worldwide, royalty-free license to use this The Outline Applet software (the "Software"). Licensee agrees that it shall not use the Software for computer operations of any critical nature.
  2. Source Code Whilst the author may occasionally make source code available, it is NOT in the public domain and the author retains full copyright over it. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES may software be sold containing code derived from this source code without David Griffiths giving his explicit permission.
  3. Restrictions. The Software is copyrighted and title to all copies is retained by the author. Licensee shall not make copies of Software, other than a single copy of Software in machine-readable format for back-up or archival purposes and, if applicable, Licensee may print one copy of on-line documentation, in which event all proprietary rights notices on Software and on-line documentation shall be reproduced and applied to all copies. Unless enforcement of this provision is prohibited by applicable law, Licensee shall not modify, decompile, disassemble, decrypt, extract, or otherwise reverse engineer Software. Software may not be transferred, leased, assigned, or sublicensed, in whole or in part.
  4. Disclaimer of Warranty. The Software is provided "AS IS," without a warranty of any kind. ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANT-ABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, ARE HEREBY EXCLUDED.
  5. Limitation of Liability. IN NO EVENT WILL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY LOST REVENUE, PROFIT OR DATA, OR FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, INCIDENTAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES HOWEVER CAUSED AND REGARDLESS OF THEORY OF LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE SOFTWARE, EVEN IF THE AUTHOR HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
  6. Termination. Licensee may terminate this License at any time by destroying all copies of Software including any documentation. This License will terminate immediately without notice from David Griffiths if Licensee fails to comply with any provision of this License. Upon termination, Licensee must destroy all copies of Software.
  7. Severability. If any of the above provisions are held to be in violation of applicable law, void, or unenforceable in any jurisdiction, then such provisions are herewith waived to the extent necessary for the License to be otherwise enforceable in such jurisdiction, However, if in the author's opinion deletion of any provisions of the License by operation of this paragraph unreasonably compromises the rights or liabilities of the author, David Griffiths reserves the right to terminate the License and refund the fee paid by Licensee as Licensee's sole and exclusive remedy.
  8. Integration. This Agreement is the entire agreement between Licensee and David Griffiths relating to Software and: (i) supersedes all prior or contemporaneous oral or written communications, proposals and representations with respect to its subject matter; and (ii) prevails over any conflicting or additional terms of any quote, order, acknowledgment, or similar communication between the parties during the term of this Agreement. No modification to the Agreement will be binding, unless in writing and signed by a duly authorized representative of each party.

Congratulations...

...upon choosing this product. Not only will it improve your health, and enhance your general spirituality, it will also clean the bath, cook you breakfast, take care of the children, end armed conflict and invigorate the look of your web page.

Introduction

You should be careful to check that your unzipping program has named the files correctly. Some DOS programs will name according to the old 8.3 format, rename .class files "*.cla". You can rename them by opening up a DOS window and typing: 


ren *.cla *.class

The Gallery Example

David Griffiths' Web Site

NB: If you cannot see an applet above, then you may need to extract more file from the .ZIP archive before reading this page.

The code which produces the above is:

 

Insert This code into between the <Body> tags of your HTML Page.

Click here to extract all needed files with example to your hard drive!

Using Outline in a web page...

To include Outline in a web page, you should copy the Outline.class file into the same directory as the web page and then insert an <APPLET...> tag into the page, e.g.

 

Insert This code into between the <Body> tags of your HTML Page.

If you have used applets before you will have noticed that Outline is a little different. First of all you don't have to pass it any graphics files for use as icons. The Outline class contains all of the images it needs. Secondly, you do not pass parameters to Outline with <param....> tags.

Outline works by spicing up the sort of indented lists that you see all the time in web pages. It does it by reading the HTML code between the <applet...> and </applet> tags. That way you don't have to separately maintain the list code in the applet and the list-code that will be visible to non-Java browsers. Another advantage is that you should be able to edit the web page in a WYSIWYG editor (such as Frontpage 98) far more easily than a traditional applet. It also means that Outline is perfect for use in automated pages which traditionally use indented lists, such as message boards, guestbooks, etc..

NOTE: Outline reads the lists related to the first Outline applet on a page. Consequently, you cannot use more than one Outline on a page at a time.

Talking about FrontPage 98, you are probably wondering what all the weird code wrapped around the <applet> tags in the gallery example is for. If you try opening the page in FP you will not see the applet, but instead a set of indented lists which you can directly edit. Hopefully this will make you life easier.

You set the width and height to be large enough to display the outline tree when it is fully expanded. Incidentally, the maximum height will always be 16 * the maximum number of displayed rows.

I'd suggest you put the class files in the same directory as the page on which it will appear. If you want to move it elsewhere then use the "CODEBASE" option to point to the appropriate directory.

Why won't the applet work off my hard disk?

Some web browsers have trouble opening applets straight from a hard disk. I have noticed this happen with Internet Explorer 3 and Netscape 4. Once you have loaded the class file and the web page onto your web site you should find it works OK.

Why does my web page say "Class Format Error"?

Class files are binary files, just like image files are. Binary files contain more information than text (also known as ASCII) files do. If you transfer class files as if they were ASCII files then they will lose this extra information and will become corrupted. How do you transfer class files as binary files? You should transfer them in the same way that you transfer image files.

Why does my web page say "Class Not Found"?

This is a very common problem. It may be because of one of the following:

  1. You have not put the class file onto the web site
  2. You are not calling the file with the correct name (rename to use the same combination of upper- and lower-case letters as your class file)
  3. Your transfer program has changed the name. This does happen. Some programs will shorten the ".class" extension to ".cla". Other will change the case of the letters to either all uppercase or all lowercase. See if you can change the options on the transfer program to stop it doing this.
  4. You have include a "codebase=…" clause inside your <applet…> code in your web page. "codebase=…" tells the browser to look some place else for the class file.
  5. Some other reason I haven't thought of :-)

Examples from the Web

If you think you have come up with a particularly inventive way of using this applet then please email me so I can think about including it as an example here.

Linking to my site

If you use this applet then it would be nice if you gave me a link by copying the image:

(this is the file "dglogo.gif" in the .zip archive) into the same directory as your web page and then pasting the following into your page. 


    <a href="http://www.demon.co.uk/davidg/spigots.htm" target="_top">
    <img src="dglogo.gif"
          width=88 height=31 border=0></a>

It will put a little button on your page that will link through to my Java Spigots page.

It is only a request: feel free to omit it.

Transferring files

Remember that if you are transferring the .class file to another machine with FTP, you should set the 'binary' mode on. Failure to do so will corrupt the file and give rise to a "Class Format" error.

Contacting Me

If you still have trouble getting the applet to work and you have tried all of the possible solutions listed above, then feel to contact me, remembering to include:

  1. A precise description of the problem (do you just get a grey rectangle, or an error message etc. etc.)
  2. The URL of the page containing the applet (that's the actual page - not just the front page on your site)

These two pieces of information will make it a lot easier for me to solve the problem. I cannot guarantee that I will be able to respond to all messages (there's only so many hours in the day...) but sending the URL of a page that doesn't work will greatly increase the chances of getting an answer.

Remember to keep a look out at my web site for new applets.

David Griffiths,