"DummyBrowser" is a very simple minimalist web browser, written in Java, and using the JEditPane swing component to render HTML pages, and to follow links to other pages. Note that JEditPane can only render some HTML, so that pages with HTML content it can't handle will either not be correctly rendered, or will cause errors.
This program is heavily based on the Java demonstration Browser class, written by Marty Hall - www.apl.jhu.edu/~hall/java in 1998. It has been modified by Lawrie Brown to add a few more features, to suit its use to test web server access in isolated, test computer networking and cisco lab classes.
Since DummyBrowser is written in Java, it will run on any system with a suitable Java runtime. If one is not present already on your system, it may be obtained from Sun Microsystems - http://java.sun.com/j2se/.
The DummyBrowser suite comprises the following files:
DummyBrowser.jar
- the main Java JAR archive, which contains all the compiled program class
files. This is an executable jar file, which may be run directly if your
system knows how to do this, or by using the command:java - jar DummyBrowser.jar
DummyBrowser.java - the source for the main
DummyBrowser program.
Makefile - a Unix Makefile for compiling and
packaging the program
manifest.txt - a JAR manifest file naming the
main class so that the resulting jar file is executable
To install it on your system, provided you have a Java runtime present,
you need only copy the jar file to a suitable location on your system.
If you want to inspect/recompile the source, all of the above files are
bundled in the DummyServer.jar
JAR file, and can be extracted using the command: jar xvf DummyServer.jar
You can simply run DummyBrowser from the jar file. It will start by displaying this page, and then you can either type in a new URL to go to, or follow any hyperlink. At any time you can return to the initial (home) page, go back to a previous page, or quit the program by selecting the appropriate button. If you explicitly run DummyBrowser from the command-line, you can supply an optional alternate filename argument which is used as the initial (home) page (and which must be included in the jar archive to be found, or the archive unpacked and the file placed in the same directory).