Movie options

Movie control panel

The movie control panel allows the movie to be stopped and rewound as well as muting of the sound. If you choose to display the control panel it always appears directly underneath the movie screen.

After displaying movie screen

Once the applet is displayed the movie need not be started. If the control panel is also displayed then the user can choose to start the movie when they are ready.

At end of movie

When the movie finishes the applet creator can choose to have the movie terminate or loop. Termination can involve simply ending the movie in which case the last frame of the movie continues to be shown or the option can be selected to blank out the movie screen in which case the resources that the movie consumes on the client computer are immediately released.

Location of software to play movie

The software to play the movie can either be included in the applet or the applet can expect to find the Java Media Framework plugin installed on the client machine.

Expecting the plugin has the advantage that the maximum numbers of media types is catered for and that the best possible performance can be achieved using a version of JMF that is tuned for a particlular platform (eg. the Windows version). There are two disadvantages:

Including the player software with the applet does not require a plugin and will not cause Netscape to ask questions. The disadvantages are:

Percentage screen size chnage

This number is the percentage by which the movie screen should be made bigger or smaller. It is recommended that this option only be used when the movie is played with the plugin as there are some flicker problems with the using the all Java movie player.