Sometimes, it is useful for an applet to launch a modal dialog whose parent is the browser window containing the applet. This is so when we’d like to get some data from a user via a dialog, and we’d like the dialog to always sit on top the browser window.
Before the days of Java plugin, all we had to do was to get the parent of the applet, cast it into a Frame, and set it as parent of the dialog.
//somewhere in the applet code .... Frame parent = ((Frame)this.getParent()); Dialog d = new Dialog(parent, true); .... //rest of the applet code This works fine if the applet is viewed from a plain HTML page without the use of plugin. With the java plugin, however, this approach causes a “ClassCastException”. The windowing object hierarchy differ from one major browser to the other.
In case of Internet Explorer (IE) 5.0, we have to get the parent of the parent of the parent. In case of Netscape, we have to get the parent of the parent. So, to cover the bases, we have to do something like:
If the "parent of the parent of the applet's parent" is not null then use it for setting the parent //IE with plugin else If the "parent of the applet's parent" is not null then //Netscape with plugin use it for setting the parent else //No plugin/Appletviewer use the applet's parent for setting the parent This is a bit awkward, isn’t it? Well, now that we know some parent of some child must be a Frame, we can use a recursive function that finds the first parent frame, as in:
public Frame getParentFrame(Component c) { Container cont = c.getParent(); if (cont instanceof Frame) { return (Frame) cont; } else { return getParentFrame((Component) cont); } } Then, we can use this function as in:
//somewhere in the applet code .... Frame parent = getParentFrame(this); Dialog d = new Dialog(parent, true); .... //rest of the applet code This way, we’ll have a generic approach that covers browsers with or without the plugin as well as the appletviewer.
