HotMedia 3.5.17 in Netscape 2.02 - 6.01, Internet Explorer 3.04 - 6.0b

[John Neffenger]

Many thanks to the IBM HotMedia team for releasing such a fine product
and making it easy to embed it in other Java applets! Below are the
test results of HotMedia 3.5.17 embedded in another applet running on
most of the Java compatible browsers out there.

We tested two HotMedia files:

- one containing a thumbnail image with mouse click transition,
animation, and background audio (at 2 minutes, 30 seconds, 207 KB),
and
- one containing a thumbnail image with mouse click transition,
scrolling image, and background audio (at 4 minutes, 40 seconds,
456 KB).

We tested on the following 14 browser environments. See the notes below
for any browser-specific problems we found.

Year System Browser Version Java Version Notes
---- ----------- ---------------------- ------------------ -----
2000 Windows 98 Internet Explorer 6.0b Microsoft 1.1.4
2000 Windows 98 Netscape 6.01 Sun 1.3.0_01 (1)
2000 Windows Me Internet Explorer 5.5 Microsoft 1.1.4
2000 Windows Me Netscape 4.76 Netscape 1.1.5
1999 Windows 98 Internet Explorer 5.0 Microsoft 1.1.4
2000 Windows 98 Netscape 4.76 Netscape 1.1.5
1997 Windows 95 Internet Explorer 4.01 Microsoft 1.1
1997 Windows 95 Netscape 4.04 Netscape 1.1.2
1996 Windows 95 Internet Explorer 3.02 Microsoft 1.0.2 (2)
1997 Windows 95 Netscape 3.04 Gold Netscape 1.02
1996 Windows 95 Netscape 2.02 Gold Netscape 1.021 (3)
2000 Mac OS 9.1 Internet Explorer 5.0 Apple MRJ 2.2.4
2000 Mac OS 9.1 Netscape 4.76 Netscape 1.1.5
2000 Red Hat 7.0 Netscape 4.75 Netscape 1.1.5 (4)

(1) Works, but no sound.
(2) IE 3.02 does not allow the loading of files outside the CAB
applet archive, so for HotMedia to be embedded you must either
(a) remove the applet "cabbase" parameter, or (b) put the
HotMedia classes into your own CAB file.
(3) The HotMedia control buttons don't appear. NS 2.02 supports
only 8-bit color for Java applets, so the images are dithered.
There is heavy CPU usage because there is no just-in-time
compiler, so the background audio is frequently interrupted.
(4) Works, but no sound.

So everything works in our tests except for the 1996 browsers, and both
Netscape on Linux and Netscape 6 have no sound support.

Thanks again for the excellent work!

John Neffenger