An applet failed to load or is unavailable

Question

I am getting this error on IE 8 ,9 firefox and chrome. while editing content in WebSphere Portal 7.

IWKAP0010W: An applet failed to load or is unavailable. Certain Web Content Management features will not be available.

Is there any way to solve this.

Answer 1

You need us to give a bit more information:

• Q: Which exact version of ws portal are you using?
  A: 7.0.0.2 (your answer)
• Q: Which culmulative fix (CF) level have you installed? (cp. fixes below)
  A: ?
• Q: What java version have you installed (which is running in the webbrowser)?
  A: ?
• Q: Did you check the java plugin and the webbrowser security settings?
  A: ?

Maybe your issues have been fixed with a CF?

• in CF027 Issue/Apar PI09604 (they fixed compatibility with 7u51)
• in CF022 Issue/APAR PM88690 (fixed security warning)
• in CF021 Issue/APAR PM81772 and PM84580 (Renewal of certificate)
• in CF010 Issue/APAR PM49505 (firefox problems)
• in CF002 Issue/APAR PM33239 (chrome problems)

So please update your WP7 to the latest CF and try again. Download and installing instructions are on the page provided above or here.

Answer 2

This seems like there is no Java plug-in (since you mention IE8 also gives you this error) on the system you are using to access WCM authoring. Newer, auto-updating browsers such as Firefox and Chrome tend to block all but the absolute latest Oracle Java plug-in for security reasons. However, typically there is a prompt to "allow this time." IE8 doesn't do this, but you'll get the same error message from WCM (IWKAP0010W) if you have no Java plug-in installed.

There are a couple of ways you could resolve this:

• Ensure that you have the latest Oracle Java Plug-In installed in on the computer doing the WCM authoring. Since you mention IE8, I suspect perhaps no Java plug-in is installed at all.
• Change your authoring template to not use rich text at all
• Change your content item or authoring template to use a different rich text editor that does not use a Java applet. There are others out there; IBM even ships WCM7+ a JavaScript-based rich editor that is better than plain text but has less features than Ephox EditLive! and requires no Java plug-in for authoring.

Usually the easiest is to just install Java on the authoring computer. If that's not an option (for example you don't have installation permission), you could change your content system to no longer require Java applets for editing.