Preparing your Applet for the Web

Currently, distribution is fairly inconvenient for the developer. To support Internet Explorer, it is best to create a CAB file because although the most recent versions of Internet Explorer support JAR files, the CAB format works across the widest range of versions. Further, if you want to sign them, you may want to use CAB.
To support the newest browsers from Netscape and Sun you should create a JAR file. To support older versions of Netscape Navigator, you'll need to include a ZIP file.
Finally, you should leave the class files in their raw form for any miscellaneous browsers that have been slower to adopt the newer technologies.
So how do you go about preparing all of these compressed archives? In the next sections we will walk you through the process so it can be as painless as possible.

Distribution History
Table of Contents
Building a ZIP Archive