If somebody is interested, i simulate "PostThreadMessage" calls with custom
messages by two classes:

// Update GUI data (and invalidate applet area)
class DoUpdateGUI implements Runnable {
 private FTPUploadApplet applet;
 private int value;

 public DoUpdateGUI(FTPUploadApplet applet, int value) {
   this.applet = applet;
   this.value = value;
 }

 public void run() {
   applet.jProgressBar.setValue(val);
 }
};

class UploadDone implements Runnable { ... };

and from the worker ftp upload thread:

while () {
 DoUpdateGUI r1 = new DoUpdateGUI(progressBarValue);
 SwingUtilities.invokeLater(r1);
}

UploadDone r2 = new UploadDone(message);
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(r2);

It works, don't know if it's clean (not really since there's a new() call
every 1024 byte send).

I don't know of calling setValue force a redraw instantly, i hope not.

I wouldn't worry about that. Even if it is not synchronized in any way
(which I doubt very much) there is nothing that can go wrong, you are just
assigning some new value to some variable.
And doing that from your upload thread seems very reasonable for me.
You just take care of the model (upload percent) from your thread,
not the look (EDT will repaint).

That'r s right, you never call paint yourself, it's the AWT framework
that does it. All you do is call Component.repaint() which puts an
repaint-request event in the EventQueue of EDT, and the EDT
will take care of it when it gets to that event.

Adam