Hi.

I'm playing around with developing a web-based application that needs
to use a java applet in order to implement some advanced functionality
that I don't see as being feasible with pure javascript (it involves
dynamically drawing and editing vector graphics).
My initial design has the workspace area where the vector graphics are
drawn AND the toolbars needed to interact with it both done inside the
applet.  The problem with this is that at least one of the toolbar
commands needs to cause the browser to load another web page, which I
don't believe is possible*.  It does however seem quite feasible to
have the toolbars implemented in client-side javascript, such that each
button sends a command to the applet.  I've tested this and it works
fine under IE6/Java 1.5, and I assume it should work with most
java-enabled browser platforms.  In that case there's no problem having
some of the toolbar commands do things such as load another web page.
But are there any known disadvantages to doing it this way?  Does
anyone have any experience trying to do this sort of thing?  My
toolbars use transparent gifs and some are "toggle buttons", that stay
down once clicked - I'm not sure if there are any issues implementing
these with JavaScript.  Obviously it's possible to have some toolbars
done in JavaScript and others be part of the applet, but I'd prefer not
to have to do this if possible.

* There appears to be something called "LiveConnect" that does support
this, but on the one web page I found demonstrating it, it didn't work.