how do you open web pages in java?

Is there a fairly simple way to open a web page within a GUI's JPanel?

If not, how do you open a web page with the computer's default web browser?

I am hoping for something that I can do with under 20 lines of code, and at most would need to create one class. No reason for 20 though, just hoping for little code...

I am planning to open a guide to go with a game. The guide is online and has multiple pages.. but the pages link to each other, so i am hoping i only have to call one URL with my code.

From stackoverflow

• There are two standard ways that I know of:

  1. The standard JEditorPane component

  2. Desktop.getDesktop().browse(URI) to open the user's default browser (Java 6 or later)

     Soon, there will also be a third:

  3. The JWebPane component, which apparently has not yet been released

  JEditorPane is very bare-bones; it doesn't handle CSS or JavaScript, and you even have to handle hyperlinks yourself. But you can embed it into your application more seamlessly than launching FireFox would be.

  Here's a sample of how to use hyperlinks (assuming your documents don't use frames):

  // ... initialize myEditorPane
  myEditorPane.setEditable(false); // to allow it to generate HyperlinkEvents
  myEditorPane.addHyperlinkListener(new HyperlinkListener() {
      public void hyperlinkUpdate(HyperlinkEvent e) {
          if (e.getEventType() == HyperlinkEvent.EventType.ENTERED) {
              myEditorPane.setToolTipText(e.getDescription());
          } else if (e.getEventType() == HyperlinkEvent.EventType.EXITED) {
              myEditorPane.setToolTipText(null);
          } else if (e.getEventType() == HyperlinkEvent.EventType.ACTIVATED) {
              try {
                  myEditorPane.setPage(e.getURL());
              } catch (IOException ex) {
                  // handle error
                  ex.printStackTrace();
              }
          }
      }
  });
  

  Michael Myers : Just curious, but how could I have improved this answer?

  GA Tech Mike : saua said "JEditorPane has some HTML ability, but it's very limited and not suiteable for a general-purpose browser." so i just went with the more simplistic one line of code saua posted... I was not going for something very nice looking, i am just trying to put together something that functions

  GA Tech Mike : I will probably give your code a try later on, but i did not try to run it... so i did not want to click that it was an answer since i don't actually know

  Michael Myers : Well, I also gave you saua's way before saua posted it. That's what the last sentence is referring to (did I make it unclear?).

  GA Tech Mike : yea, i saw them both at the same time and he had the code in the box thing, so it stuck out more.. i did not realize you posted the same thing..

  GA Tech Mike : i tend to read the starts of something which i kinda expect to be a quick summary of the rest of the post... so i guess you could mention the different methods at the beginning and then explain each one after that

  Michael Myers : Good point. (And thanks for answering the question in my first comment!)

• I don't know if such a built-in exists, but I would use the Runtime class's exec with iexplore.exe or firefox.exe as an argument.

  Nuno Furtado : If you do it with Runtime you would need to know wich browser the user runs. Hardly the best option

  Geo : So you check for the presence of 3 browsers. I never said this was the best option.

• Opening a web page on the default web page is easy:

  java.awt.Desktop.getDesktop().browse(theURI);
  

  Embedding a browser is not so easy. JEditorPane has some HTML ability (if I remember my limited Swing-knowledge correctly), but it's very limited and not suiteable for a general-purpose browser.

  dfa : Desktop API is only for java 1.6

  Joachim Sauer : @dfa: so? There was no requirement for anything earlier and it's reasonable to use up-to-date APIs.

• If you're developing an applet, you can use AppletContext.showDocument. That would be a one-liner:

  getAppletContext().showDocument("http://example.com", "_blank");
  

  If you're developing a desktop application, you might try Bare Bones Browser Launch.

• haven't tried it at all, but the cobra HTML parser and viewer from the lobo browser, a browser writen in pure java, may be what you're after. They provide sample code to set up an online html viewer:

  import javax.swing.*;
  import org.lobobrowser.html.gui.*;
  import org.lobobrowser.html.test.*;
  
  public class BareMinimumTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
      JFrame window = new JFrame();
      HtmlPanel panel = new HtmlPanel();
      window.getContentPane().add(panel);
      window.setSize(600, 400);
      window.setVisible(true);
      new SimpleHtmlRendererContext(panel, new SimpleUserAgentContext())
      .navigate("http://lobobrowser.org/browser/home.jsp");
    }
  }