Link Details

This fails on so many levels:

a) I go to the applet version - it pops up a security dialog? FAIL #1 right there (Flash or Silverlight don't do it, do they?)

b) then I wait 30 seconds looking at a blank applet...nothing happens...finally give up. FAIL #2 right there again.

You can't build a house if you don't have a foundation...and the foundation (i.e. the infamous 6u10 applet plugin rewrite) is still a joke compared to Flash.
I would never risk my app's success on it.

a) It's somewhat outside our control, it's how the Java plug-in works. It's asking you if you trust the provider of the application. If you do trust, you can check 'Always trust...' and you won't see the message again.

b) I don't know what OS you are running, but if you are running Linux, you might have to to this: http://weblogs.java.net/blog/cayhorstmann/archive/2008/09/applet_dragging.html

There is definitely room for improvement, hopefully JavaFX and community are moving there.

Firefox 3.5 on Mac OS X froze while loading this. A security dialog then asked me for permission to allow it for unrestricted access to my computer. Why would _anybody_ want to allow this?

I cancel the dialog and was presented with a blank screen. Something was odd afterwards though, and it forced me to restart the browser.

I would never even recommend JavaFX to anybody because of these issues. "room for improvement" should be "lets wait a couple of years and see if they fix the issues". Lets have this conversation again then.

That's my point...you can't build a house without a working foundation (i.e. the applet plugin). If the applets don't work 100% perfectly all the time, the basic premise for JavaFX is broken, period. it's not JavaFX's fault, it's the fact that everyone on the planet (i.e. Flash and Silverlight) can get their plugins workign peffectly and despite 10 years of effort, Sun can't get the Java one to do the same (from an end user experience point of view).

Yes, I am on Linux, but am not trying to do any drag and drop...the applet just doesn't load...at all...and I'm on JDK 6.0.14 plugin, so the most recent of the recent.

It's sad, really.

It's nothing to do with drag and drop. Your Java plug-in is OK, it's just Firefox is loading an older version of the Java plug-in.

Nope. I only have 6.0.14 enabled (checked in both Firefox plugins and Plugin panel)...the applet just sits there..waiting...forever...endlessly.... :-(

Still another reason to avoid JavaFX then.

Here is a script we used internally to fix this problem, if you want try it: http://tinypaste.com/88d90 . I ran it and it started working for me.

applet doesnt work :-(
using firefox 3 and java 6

Unfortunately, this proves that 6u10 was a failure and should be viewed as such. Applets are still unreliable and hence JavaFX is not an option because of them.
Instead of working on JavaFX 1.X, I suggest Sun (Oracle?) gets its engineering team back in the room and figure out what needs to be done to get applets running at 99% success rate. All other JavaFX work should be stopped until then (if it requires the same resources).

Without it JavaFX will be just a footnote in the "obscure languages that never caught on" section of computer science.

Let's hope Sun (or better Oracle) sees this and work on making the plug-in better. I'm guessing the problem is due to the plug-in, I'm able to start the application on my machine in a few seconds. One thing to try is to open Java console and check what errors (if any) are displayed there.

I like JavaFX as a language because it make UI development for people like me so simple, but the aforementioned problem with java plugin is a real problem and is most irritating thing about Java RIA, the loading time is disastrous, and more that 4-5 times I face problem in my firefox where java just freezes it on any applet load, and I have to use alternate browser just to use that page, that too, first by killing firefox process from console because it turned grey and all my tabs seem to lose, then also , everytime java applet load , if you're behind proxy it just refuse to remember proxy username/password, and you have to enter them every single time when you load an applet.