Display background Image in Applet

Displaying backgound Image in an Applet is a two step process.

First - Get the handle to the image using a simplified method getImage() or using the MediaTracker API. This is done in the Applet's init() method. Using the Media Tracker provides more events/notification that can handled ex.failed to load the media, etc.

Also with Media Tracker a variety of resource types can be retrieved not just image.

Finally - Once the image handle is there, draw the image at a given location in the Applet's paint(..) method with the drawImage(image,x,y, this) method.

The image can of any format like jpg, gif, png etc.

package com.livrona.snippets.applet;

import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;

/**
 * This snippet shows how to load background image in the Applet 
 * @author mvohra
 *
 */
public class DisplayImageApplet extends JApplet {
	private static final long serialVersionUID = -5674243667829955526L;
	
	private Image im;	// image handler
	private static final String IMAGE = "background.gif";

	/**
	 * Applet init() method
	 */
	public void init() {

		// get the image
		getImageSimple();
		// or
		// getImageWithMediaTracker();
	}

	/**
	 * Applet paint() method
	 */
	public void paint(Graphics g) {
		// draw the image and location
		int x = 0;
		int y = 0;

		// this is refers to image observer
		g.drawImage(im, x, y, this);
	}

	/**
	 * Simply get the Image
	 */
	private void getImageSimple() {
		// get the image
		im = getImage(getDocumentBase(), IMAGE);
	}

	/**
	 * Get the Image and add Media Tracker to see image downloading
	 */
	private void getImageWithMediaTracker() {
		// get image
		im = getImage(getDocumentBase(), IMAGE);

		// create and add Media Tracker
		MediaTracker tracker = new MediaTracker(this);
		// add the image to tracker and give it an id say 0
		tracker.addImage(im, 0);
		try {
			// start loading the image with Id = 0
			// in this case the image
			tracker.waitForID(0);
		} catch (InterruptedException e) {
			System.out.println("Error loading Image : " + e.getMessage());
		}
	}

}

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