An applet can load a web page in a browser window using the showDocument methods in the java.applet.AppletContext class.

Here are the two forms of showDocument:

public void showDocument(java.net.URL url)
public void showDocument(java.net.URL url, String targetWindow)

The one-argument form of showDocument simply instructs the browser to display the document at the specified URL, without specifying the window in which to display the document.

The two-argument form of showDocument lets you specify the window or HTML frame in which to display the document. The second argument can have one of the folllowing values:

• "_blank" – Display the document in a new, nameless window.
• "windowName" – Displays the document in a window named windowName. This window is created if necessary.
• "_self" – Display the document in the window and frame that contain the applet.
• "_parent" – Display the document in parent frame of the applet's frame. If the applet frame has no parent frame, this acts the same as "_self".
• "_top" – Display the document in the top-level frame. If the applet's frame is the top-level frame, this acts the same as "_self".

---

Note:  In this discussion, frame refers not to a Swing JFrame, but to an HTML frame within a browser window.

---

The following applet enables you try every argument of both forms of showDocument. The applet opens a window that lets you type in a URL and choose an option for the targetWindow argument. When you press Return or click the Show document button, the applet calls showDocument.

---

Note: If you don't see the applet running, make sure that you have at least the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE) 1.4.2 release on your client. If not, download and install the latest release of the Java SE Development Kit (JDK).

---

---

Note: If you don't see the example running, you might need to enable the JavaScript interpreter in your browser so that the Deployment Toolkit script can function properly.

---

Following is the applet code that calls showDocument. Here is the whole program.

        ...//In an Applet subclass:
        urlWindow = new URLWindow(getAppletContext());
        . . .

class URLWindow extends Frame {
    . . .
    public URLWindow(AppletContext appletContext) {
        . . .
        this.appletContext = appletContext;
        . . .
    }
    . . .
    public boolean action(Event event, Object o) {
        . . .
            String urlString = /* user-entered string */;
            URL url = null;
            try {
                url = new URL(urlString);
            } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
                ...//Inform the user and return...
            }

            if (url != null) {
                if (/* user doesn't want to specify the window */) {
                    appletContext.showDocument(url);
                } else {
                    appletContext.showDocument(url,
                                               /* user-specified window */);
                }
            }
        . . .

Download source code for the Show Document example to experiment further.