[4491] in java-interest
Re: Transparent Applets
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Locke)
Wed Jan 3 02:25:17 1996
Date: Tue, 2 Jan 1996 21:02:37 -0800 (PST)
From: Jonathan Locke <jonl@sealevelsoftware.com>
To: Arthur van Hoff <Arthur.Vanhoff@Eng.Sun.COM>
Cc: eknudson@vnet.IBM.COM, java-interest@java.Eng.Sun.COM
In-Reply-To: <199601021937.LAA28895@jakarta.Eng.Sun.COM>
On Tue, 2 Jan 1996, Arthur van Hoff wrote:
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> Hi Erik,
>
> > Another vote for transparent Applets. Until this happens most
> > graphical applets aren't even usable in anything other than prototype
> > applications!
>
> Although this isn't currently supported there are some hooks for making
> this work in the future. One is that we can change the damage event handler
> so that it draws the appropriate background, the other is that we need to
> fixed Graphics.clearRect() so that it draws the applet background rather
> than just the background color.
>
> For now you can try to work around it by painting the correct background
> yourself. I realize that that isn't a good long term solution...
seems to me that this is really more a question of browser architecture than
a problem with java. naturally, only the browser really knows what's supposed
to be painted underneath a java applet. so all we need is a way for a java
applet to tag itself as being interested in this data, and then give it a
(probably native) function to call to get the bitmap underlying the applet.
that would solve the current problem. long term, perhaps the data underneath
a java applet is non-static and the browser would have to be able to update
the underlying bitmap and invalidate the applet (probably can already)...
a couple of scenarios where i could imagine this happening are if 1) a
browser implements animated backgrounds and/or 2) a browser allows
applets to overlap one another (say a java applet running on top of a
shockwave plug-in). allowing overlapping applets might have some really
nice/interesting side-effects if it was done right... one quick idea is
that you could write java applets that just act as image filters for other
content drawn underneath. it's interesting that the idea of overlapping
applets starts making java more like the underlying OS (windows/x/mac etc).
i can imagine it would be useful to have "little desktops" of overlapping
yet in-line java "framelets"... or perhaps java applets that you can reshape
and the HTML around the applet automatically reflows... there is so *much*
possible here... something to think about before jumping to any solutions.
being human, we can't anticipate everything, but we should try not to
exclude reasonable possibilities.
J
>
> Have fun,
>
> Arthur van Hoff
>
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