Applet with JRE 1.5 (IE6) fails to open HTML page over HTTPS, works with JRE1.6

Question

Hello,

I have a small (500kb) swing applet that displays small HTML page with JEditorPane. This works nicely with most browsers and JREs, but with JRE 1.5 (IE6) it seem to display just blank. There are no error messages on java console or exceptions.

Applet is able to load TXT files with all JREs just fine, with JAVA CONSOLE tracing 5 option it displays the same diagnostic message for both text files and html files:

network: Connecting https://xxx.net/xxx/data/my.txt with proxy=DIRECT

network: Connecting https://xxx.net/xxx/data/my2.htm with proxy=DIRECT

Any ideas how to diagnose further whats going wrong, or how to fix it?

I don't have console access to my client's server hosting the applet, but I have a test machine with IE6+JRE 1.5 that I can use to access their HTTPS url and reproduce the problem. The problem does not appear with other browsers / JRE 1.6.

Applet is unsigned since the HTML page and applet are located in same folder in same server.

Answer 1

Have you tried running something like Wireshark to see if the request is actually happening or if you're actually getting a response? If it's something weird with the network (maybe the 1.5 JRE is doing something weird with the request) then that might help you track it down.

Answer 2

Can't you just insert logging statements into the applet source code & redeploy? You should be able to see the log output in the java console. That should help to narrow down the problem.

Answer 3

Solution found, JEditorPane Async mode was causing this issue, switching to Syncronized mode solved bug with JRE 1.5