How to wait for a Java applet to finish loading on Safari?

I use a timer that resets and keeps checking a number of times before it gives up.

<script language="text/javascript" defer>

function performAppletCode(count) {
    var applet = document.getElementById('MyApplet');

    if (!applet.myMethod && count > 0) {
       setTimeout( function() { performAppletCode( --count ); }, 2000 );
    }
    else if (applet.myMethod) {
       // use the applet for something
    }
    else {
       alert( 'applet failed to load' );
    }
}  

performAppletCode( 10 );

</script>               

Note that this assumes that the applet will run in Safari. I've had some instances where an applet required Java 6 that simply hangs Safari even with code similar to the above. I chose to do browser detection on the server and redirect the user to an error page when the browser doesn't support the applet.

Here is a generic function I wrote to do just this:

/* Attempt to load the applet up to "X" times with a delay. If it succeeds, then execute the callback function. */
function WaitForAppletLoad(applet_id, attempts, delay, onSuccessCallback, onFailCallback) {
    //Test
    var to = typeof (document.getElementById(applet_id));
    if (to == "function") {
        onSuccessCallback(); //Go do it.
        return true;
    } else {
        if (attempts == 0) {
            onFailCallback();
            return false;
        } else {
            //Put it back in the hopper.
            setTimeout(function () {
                WaitForAppletLoad(applet_id, --attempts, delay, onSuccessCallback, onFailCallback);
            }, delay);
        }
    }
}

Call it like this:

WaitForAppletLoad("fileapplet", 10, 2000, function () {
    document.getElementById("fileapplet").getDirectoriesObject("c:/");
}, function () {
    alert("Sorry, unable to load the local file browser.");
});

I had a similar problem some time ago and adding MAYSCRIPT to the applet tag solved my problem.

Take a peek at this page: http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/applets/_APPLET_MAYSCRIPT.html

Hope it helps!