Running vintage Java applets

I have a program that requires an older version of Java to run. My modern Chrome browser and final version of Microsoft Explorer will not open the browser applet. I decided to create an offline version for my Dell Windows XP laptop.

The program is called Bsim. It's a web application that simulates a programming environment for study of robot behavior. It's an important addition to the book Robot Programming : A Practical Guide to Behavior-Based Robotics by Joe Jones and Daniel Roth.

First, I need to add Java to my Windows Explorer version 6. The proper Java package is Java SE Runtime Environment 6u16 and the file jre-6u16-windows-i586 can be found at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/java-archive-downloads-javase6-419409.html#jre-6u16-oth-JPR

Once Java is installed, Microsoft Explorer is ready for the applet. Since I want to run this offline, a few more steps are required.

Create a folder to hold the Java applet. Using a computer with Microsoft Explorer 6 with online status, save the page that brings up the applet. In this case, it's http://www.behaviorbasedprogramming.net/. 

Put the html document in the folder. Next, download the .jar application. This is rather tricky since it requires knowledge of the file name. In this case I guessed it would be bsim.jar. It was a correct assumption. Other applets may be accessed if you can get into the file directory.

To reiterate, I typed http://www.behaviorbasedprogramming.net/bsim.jar into the browser command line and hit enter. The file bsim.jar downloaded immediately.

Put the .jar applet into the folder. Now while offline, by double clicking on the html document of the saved web page, the Java applet will load and operate.