Configuring 
MS Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator
to use JavaSoft's JFC/Swing packages
03 November 1998
Phillip Thorne

I.  Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.x
    A. Exploding swing.jar
    B. RegEditing the system classpath 
II. Netscape Navigator 4.x

I. Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.x

There are two ways to enable support for JFC/Swing applets in MSIE:
exploding the JavaSoft-providing swing.jar into the Windows
system-wide classes directory, or placing the unexploded JARfile in
that directory and altering the system classpath with RegEdit to point
to it. (Both methods require you to restart IE so it'll recognize the
changes.) The latter, more dangerous route, is explained in the MS
support article "Troubleshooting Java Problems in Internet Explorer"
(ID#Q168806) at:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q168/8/06.asp?FR=0

I.A. Exploding swing.jar

Unlike Netscape Navigator, IE doesn't contain its own classes
directory. Instead, it uses the same one as the rest of Windows. This
is located (on NT4.0) at:

C:\NT40\Java\Classes\

This directory by default houses a file, classes.zip, which contains
the core Java packages (java.lang, java.awt, etc.). The default system
classpath,

C:\NT40\java\classes\classes.zip;C:\NT40\java\classes;.

points to that file, to the directory itself, and to the current
directory "dot". "Java Archive" JARfiles, like the older-style
classes.zip, are simply ZIP-compressed files with an internal
directory structure, and can be unarchived with a tool such as
WinZip. If you explode swing.jar into the Classes\ directory, the
package directory structure will then be in the right place for IE to
find all the Swing classes. The tree will look something like this:

C:
 +-NT40
 |  +-Java
... | +-Classes
    | +-com
    | |  +-sun
    | |     +-java
    | |        +-accessibility
    | |        +-swing
    | |           +-border
    | |           +-event
    | |           ...
    | +-Meta-inf <-----------------(ignore this)
    +-Lib
    +-Packages
    +-TrustLib

You can ignore the Meta-inf\ directory; it contains a file called
manifest.mf that lists certain statistics about the contents of the
JARfile. If you exploded swing.jar from the new 1.1beta3 release of
JFC/Swing, your directory structure would reflect JavaSoft's altered
package naming scheme, and would look like this:

C:
 +-NT40
    +-Java
    | +-Classes
    |    +-javax
    |       +-accessibility
    |       +-swing
    |          +-border
    ...        ...

In fact, you can explode *both* JARfiles, because the directory trees
don't overlap. You can follow a similar procedure to locally install
any other third-party packages, such as KLGroup's, Netscape's IFC
(Internet Foundation Classes), Neuron Data's, Symantec's, etc.

I.B. RegEditing the system classpath

If you don't want to mess up the Windows Classes\ directory with a
package directory structure, you can risk editing the system Registry
instead, with the RegEdit program (Start->Run->Open=regedit). That 
classpath referenced above is stored under the key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Java VM\Classpath

You can modify the key's value to something like:

C:\NT40\java\classes\classes.zip;C:\NT40\java\classes\swing.jar;
C:\NT40\java\classes\swing11b3.jar;C:\NT40\java\classes;.

which adds swing.jar (pre-1.1beta3) and swing11b3.jar (which is how I
renamed the swing.jar in the 1.1beta3 release), so IE can run applets
importing *both* the old com.sun.java.swing and new javax.swing
namespaces. (Remember, the value is a single unbroken line; it's
split here for legibility.) The whole procedure, for IE 3.x and 4.x, 
Windows 95 and NT, is explained by Microsoft Support at:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q168/8/06.asp?FR=0

II. Netscape Navigator 4.x

It's much easier to enable Swing support in Navigator; you just have
to insert the necessary JARfiles in its classes directory:

C:\Program Files\Netscape\Communicator\Program\Java\Classes\

It doesn't matter what you name the JARs; Navigator's JVM (Java
virtual machine)will search them until it finds any necessary
packages. This makes it possible to run both pre- and post-1.1beta3
Swing applets: just install both swing.jar (with the old
com.sun.java.swing packages) and swing-11b3.jar (with the new
javax.swing packages). Don't explode the files! Like IE, however,
Navigator will recognize changes to the directory only with a program
restart.