I'm fairly new to Java, trying to make my first significant Japplet.  It's a
small BlackJack game with a swing interface.  I'm trying to display GIF
images of the card faces, but I can't get the GIF images to load.  I keep
getting security exceptions saying the applet doesn't have read access.

I've got the class files and images packaged in a JAR file.  The image files
are stored in a folder named "cardfile".  Here's the java code I use to read
the images:

       Toolkit kit = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();
       String blankCard = "cardfile/blank.GIF";
       Image blankCardImage = kit.getImage(blankCard);

I launch the applet with this HTML from the same directory as the JAR file:

   <applet code="Hello1.class" archive="Hello1.jar"  width="800"
height="600"> </applet>

I can run my applet from AppletViewer within my IDE (Netbeans), but I can't
run it from disk or my webserver.  Here are the runtime exceptions I keep
getting:

   java.security.AccessControlException: access denied
(java.io.FilePermission cardfile/blank.GIF read)
        at java.security.AccessControlContext.checkPermission(Unknown
Source)
        at java.security.AccessController.checkPermission(Unknown Source)
        at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkPermission(Unknown Source)
        at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkRead(Unknown Source)
        at sun.awt.SunToolkit.getImageFromHash(Unknown Source)
        at sun.awt.SunToolkit.getImage(Unknown Source)
        at GUItype.<init>(GUItype.java:61)
        at Hello1.init(Hello1.java:66)
        at sun.applet.AppletPanel.run(Unknown Source)
        at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
   Exception in thread "thread applet-Hello1.class"
java.lang.NullPointerException
        at sun.plugin.util.GrayBoxPainter.showLoadingError(Unknown Source)
        at sun.plugin.AppletViewer.showAppletException(Unknown Source)
        at sun.applet.AppletPanel.run(Unknown Source)
        at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Like I said, I'm new to Java, but best I can tell it says I don't have file
permission to read the GIF files.  I thought that Applets could read files
stored within the same codebase that they were launched from, without any
special security settings.  When I remove the attempts to read the images,
the applet works fine.  Any ideas?