On my university's site is a webpage which allows me to download
lecture notes, the page uses a menu in the form of a Java applet. The
webpage requires HTTP authentication for me to load it, the Java
applet and additional files needed for the Java applet also require a
username and password using HTTP authentication to be accessed.

Recently I changed my home OS to Linux and used Mozilla Firefox as my
browser, but I've found that I cannot open the Java applet under Linux
in either Mozilla or Firefox, my browser will either crash or freeze.
After copying the applet to my own machine for viewing in a web
browser I found that it works fine, if I password protect the
directory it doesn't.

So it seems that the Java applet under MSIE will use the
username/password which I have already entered but any other browser
will simply try and download the data without any authentication and
will simply fall over when it gets the "Forbidden" error. The source
code doesn't appear to have any sort of http authentication code
written into it, but seems to be able to authenticate using the
details entered into the browser's password box under MSIE.

I've searched Google but can't find anything related to this, does
anyone know anything about what might be causing this or how it could
be fixed, preferably without making modifications to the applet? In
all instances Sun's Java VM was used.

Thanks.