Web Browser Results

Summary

Netscape Navigator 3.xx on Windows NT and Windows 95 works properly with Misty Beach Forth.
Netscape Navigator 3.xx on Macintosh (68K and PowerPC) works properly with Misty Beach Forth.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.01 for Windows NT and Windows 95 works after you apply this patch! See below for more details.
Other browser's seem to not work. Sigh.

I only have easy access to a Windows NT machine, so if anyone has other experiences to report (especially on non-Windows NT machines), I'd love to hear about them. Email me at mark@mistybeach.com. When e-mailing me, please report the browser you were running (including version), the OS (including version) and your hardware configuration. Thanks!

Detailed Results

Vendor	Product
Netscape	Navigator 2.0x for Windows NT and Windows 95 This browser is Java aware and launches MistyBeach Forth 0.21, but does not process keyboard input properly, so the applet doesn't do anything useful. Navigator 3.00 and 3.01 for Windows NT and Windows 95 This browser is Java aware and runs MistyBeach Forth 0.21 without known problems. Navigator 3.xx for Power Macintosh This browser is Java aware and runs MistyBeach Forth 0.21 without known problems. Thanks to Greg Dougherty and John Hall for these reports. Navigator 3.xx for 68K Macintosh This browser is Java aware and runs MistyBeach Forth 0.21 without known problems. Thanks to Kevin Gilhooly for this report. Navigator (Gold) 3.01 for Linux On Linux (2.0.10) from Skip Carter while trying to run MistyBeach Forth 0.20, "all I got was a blank window that would not scroll. Nothing seemed to happen when I typed into the window (No response to typed in Forth, no elements in the stack view)." Navigator 3.01 for SunOS This browser is Java aware and launches MistyBeach Forth 0.20, but does not process keyboard input properly so the applet doesn't do anything useful. Thanks to Bob Scott for this report.
Microsoft	Internet Explorer 2.0 for Windows NT and Windows 95 This browser is not Java aware. Internet Explorer 3.00 and 3.01 for Windows NT and Windows 95 This browser is Java aware and launches MistyBeach Forth 0.21, but does not process keyboard input properly, so the applet doesn't do anything useful. There is, however, a patch available that allows Internet Explorer to run Misty Beach Forth. NOTE: You must go to the patch site using Internet Explorer. To get the patch, you must have Active content, ActiveX controls and/or ActiveX scripts enabled (I don't know which ones). If you don't have the correct items enabled, nothing happens. These options are at the bottom of the "Options/Security" page in Internet Explorer. Don't forget to turn them back off after you get the patch!
Oracle	PowerBrowser 1.5.04 for Windows NT This browser is Java aware and launches MistyBeach Forth 0.21, but does not process keyboard input properly, so the applet doesn't do anything useful.
JavaSoft	HotJava preBeta 1 for Windows NT This browser seems to trip over the <META> tags. Sigh.

Assigning the blame

Obviously, there is still some room for improvement before we have "write once, run anywhere." I'll deal with these browser problems as I can, but obviously it is going to be difficult since I don't have access to most of the problem configurations. IBM has announced that they will be opening Java testing centers where Java applications and applets can be tested on a variety of systems. This should help.

The good news is that all the problems seem to be variations of a problem fixed in the JDK 1.02 release:

Key events are now properly delivered to TextArea components.

Hopefully, the problem browsers just haven't applied this fix.

What I mean by "runs without known problems"

I mean without problems related to Java. Misty Beach Forth is not yet bug free. This page focuses on problems with various Java implementations, not problems in my code.