Great. 
shhhhh don’t jinx it!
Would it be possible to develop some kind of simple ad proxy which can be run on the server where the applet comes from? The server can open connections, for example using php. So your applet would call some PHP scripts from its source which pass on the relevant ad data. You need some java classes along that handle the communication and supply the game with ready to use ads.
What do you need for ads? Cant be that hard. Image, URL, maybe Sound? The applet can get that from its source server, where PHP scripts can do a proxy job and actually get the data from anywhere. And PHP is available almost anywhere.
-JAW
Java Doodle: crossdomain.xml Support
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/joshy/archive/2008/05/java_doodle_cro.html
I haven’t really read this whole thread, but based on the title I’d like to throw out something:
Developers write 100% Java code and it displays in Flex…also currently developing a GWT and Swing implementation as well.
From my experience that I’ve gathered over many years, having GUI in Flash (or other non-system approaches) is pretty bad thing. It’s slow, some features are not possible, etc. It’s not much better than using DHTML/AJAX. On the other hand Swing is fast, full-featured and really mature GUI toolkit. If current applet experience was horrible for someone, the new 6u10 will not be. Also from my experience with average people, they don’t see generally Java as bad as generally some users (and developers) may view (and are just the loud minority on forums).
jezek2, that’s not really true. However, that is the general conception. Flash offers significant advantages over DHTML/Ajax, but it is a bit slower. You gain the ability to draw directly to the screen and utilize vector graphics by default (something even Java doesn’t do well). That said there are some definite frustrations with it as well. I’ve actually been developing internal corporate applications with jSeamless for over a year now and also working on an e-commerce site using it. I’ve got a lot of experience with Swing and with JavaScript/HTML as well. They each have their strengths and weaknesses. It’s a shame there isn’t one clearly better than all the rest, although 6u10 does make massive strides in that direction. The purpose of jSeamless though is not simply to allow developers to write Java code that displays as Flash content, but the loftier goal of abstracting the UI in general so you aren’t concerned at development time whether it’s a Desktop application, Mobile application, or Web application. Further, within those groups you can choose to deploy on one implementation (ex. Flash) versus another (Applet, GWT, static HTML, etc).
The problem is, that you can’t abstract the form of application (desktop/web/mobile), because each have their own philosophy and constraints (size, input, handling of various things etc., network constraints). This is the same as multiplatform aspect of Java. It eases doing multiplatform apps a lot, but still you can’t simply build app on one OS and expect it to work smoothly on others. You need to test it on each platform and polish it according their specifics if you want to create good applications.
You can of course use JSeamless to create app for just one form, but why not do it directly and fully utilize all features instead of relying on stuff that is abstracted or not. And I’ve been working with abstract GUI toolkits before (like wxWidgets) and found it’s very bad approach in the end. Only after that I fully realized the power of Swing GUI (and sticking with concrete form/implementation).
I did a prototype of this concept a couple years ago using Swing and HTML which is what started me down the road of jSeamless. When you think about it, the core of nearly every UI today is extremely similar conceptually. Sure, you lose some explicit niceties from one implementation to another, but they’re really not that different when you get down to it. We’re currently focused on getting Flash, GWT, and Swing support in the short-run, but have goals of providing an OpenGL implementation as well down the road. The actual look of code in jSeamless is quite similar to Swing, although providing complete styling and effects support.