Since the introduction of Java in 1995, educators have recognized the potential of Java applets as an educational resource. Sadly, the continuing evolution of Java has made it harder to use applets, largely because it is so difficult to keep those applets compatible with the many different versions of the Java runtime environment supported by existing browsers. Over the past two years, the ACM Java Task Force (JTF) has developed an effective strategy that makes it possible to write applets using up-to-date versions of Java that will nonetheless run on browsers that support only the JDK 1.1 environment. This paper describes the acm11.jar library, which uses this strategy to achieve the desired backward compatibility. It also describes a more general solution strategy for which we have a prototype, although we are unable to release the prototype until we get permission from Sun Microsystems. The acmll.jar library can be used with any Java applet and does not depend on adopting the JTF library packages. That library therefore represents a general resource for teachers and students who want to write Java code that runs in web environments.
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