Question

I have a non-trivial Java applet. It has a menu, and via that menu applet shows a dialog that extends JDialog. Dialog is shown using setVisible(true). When user finishes working with that dialog, dialog is closed (after pressing “done” button) using this.dispose().

Now, there’s a strange problem – applet works fine in Firefox, even in IE but in Chrome, when applet shows some other (dialog) window, that window is shown behind the applet. I have to click on the place where dialog should be in order to show it (bring it to front). If I click it again (while it’s shown) it will disappear (go to background) again. Button clicks are working as usual, but whenever I click at popup window itself (even it’s title-bar) it changes it’s “visible” state.

Please, any idea what’s wrong? How to resolve that bug?

Answer 1

// the applet will typically appear inside a Window, get a reference to it using:
Window parent = Window.getWindows()[0];
// use the window as the parent of a modal dialog.
JDialog dialog = new JDialog(parent);
dialog.setModal(true);
// ...
dialog.setVisible(true);
// won't be called until the applet is dismissed 
someJComponent.requestFocusInWindow();

Applets embedded in web pages will always be subject to modality and focus problems. For a better user experience, launch the applet free-floating using Java Web Start, or even better still, launch a frame using JWS.