What version of Java are you running?

There can be issues promoting Java applications over the Internet. There are various versions of Windows and Windows Server that run pre-6 Java, or even Microsoft Java Virtual Machine.

Verifying the version of Java on someone machine is a good way of eliminating a potential problem.

Michael Horowitz sponsors the embedded applet approach at http://www.javatester.org/version.html

However, there are several issues with the embedded applet approach. One problem deals with the IE 8 browser. IE is still not entirely Java friendly, IE sometimes just decides to play dead when loading a page with a Java applet.

Sun/Oracle provides a Deployment Toolkit Script called deployJava.js. More about the deployJava.js script and usage can be found at: http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/jweb/deployment_advic...

deployJava.js is used for other things such as enhancing google analytics tracking of Java: http://cowwoc.blogspot.com/2008/12/tracking-java-versions-using-google.html

The following script will check and see if the proper version of Java is installed and will display a message if not the proper version is not installed.

 &lt;html&gt;<br />
&lt;head&gt;<br />
&nbsp;  &nbsp;  &lt;script src=&quot;http://java.com/js/deployJava.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;<br />
&lt;/head&gt;<br />
&lt;body&gt;<br />
&lt;div id=&quot;dcontent&quot; style=&quot;width:100%; background-color: #E2E2FC; padding-left: 5px&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;<br />
<br />
&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;&gt;<br />
deployJava.do_initialize();<br />
var java_message =' &lt;p&gt;&lt;h2&gt;Product XYZ requires Java&lt;/h2&gt;&lt;p&gt;Invalid version of Java.  &nbsp;XYZ  requires Java 7 or higher.  &nbsp;You can download and install Java from &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;http://java.com&quot;&gt;www.java.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;'<br />
function altercontent(){<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;if( deployJava.versionCheck(&quot;1.7&quot;)==false ) {<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;if (document.all) {<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;dcontent.innerHTML=java_message;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;} else if (document.getElementById){<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;rng = document.createRange();<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;el = document.getElementById(&quot;dcontent&quot;);<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;rng.setStartBefore(el);<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;htmlFrag = rng.createContextualFragment(java_message);<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;while (el.hasChildNodes()) {<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;el.removeChild(el.lastChild);<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;}<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;el.appendChild(htmlFrag);}<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;}<br />
}<br />
window.onload=altercontent<br />
&lt;/script&gt;<br />
&lt;/body&gt;<br />
&lt;/html&gt;<br />

Sample

A future message for Java 7: