Websphere running on Java 1.7, applet does not load on JRE 1.6 but loads on 1.8

Question

I have Websphere 8.5.5.6 running on JRE 1.7.1. I have a vendor supplied applet that works on all JREs that are 1.6+. All client machines are running JRE 1.6.0_35. Logging and Tracing are enabled and the console to show. IE 11/Edge is the client browsers.

1. When I access the webpage, the applet fails to load. There is not even an error icon or anything, console does not open. When I go to "C:\\Users...AppData..." and check for errors, there is an entry in the file when I access the webpage, however no error.

2. Now, when I upgrade a client from JRE 1.6.0_35 to JRE 1.8 - the applet loads flawlessly.

3. Please don't advise me on upgrading JRE, not in my hands and its an enterprise decision. The same applets are already working on an application deployed on IIS and is running in production successfully for the last 1 year on the same JRE client 1.6.0_35. When I access the application from a HTML page from local folder, it works with JRE 1.6.0_35. The applet vendor also confirmed the it does work on JRE 1.6.0_35.

4. Is there any relation between the client JRE version and the JRE version running on the Server?

Summarizing, applet does not seem to work only when running from WAS running on Java/JRE 1.7. Any suggestions or help is appreciated.

Thank you

Answer 1

Are you in a corporate environment?

In this case it maybe necassary to add a permision rule for websphere's url into the ruleset.xml inside %windir%\\Sun\\Java\\Deployment\\DeploymentRuleSet.jar.

Particularly if the vendor supplied applet is signed with an certifiacte from a CA unknown by JRE 1.6

For further information see this link