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
 *
 */
publicclass DisplayImageApplet extends JApplet {
privatestaticfinallong serialVersionUID =-5674243667829955526L;

private Image im;	// image handler
privatestaticfinal String IMAGE ="background.gif";

/**
	 * Applet init() method
	 */
publicvoid init() {

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

/**
	 * Applet paint() method
	 */
publicvoid 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
	 */
privatevoid getImageSimple() {
// get the image
		im = getImage(getDocumentBase(), IMAGE);
	}

/**
	 * Get the Image and add Media Tracker to see image downloading
	 */
privatevoid 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());
		}
	}

}