NetBlaster: Example
To view the applet tag in use on this page, right click inside this frame and choose View Source

The flaw here is obvious: we can't put large unnecessary files into our documentation to illustrate the benefits of using NetBlaster, and the chances are that you're reading this documentation on your local system so pre-caching will have no effect anyway!

You've probably just seen NetBlaster caching a few files from this documentation. To see it again, you'll have to 'power-refresh' your browser (Ctrl+Refresh in Internet Explorer, Shift+Reload in Netscape). For a better evaluation, we'll have to leave it to you! But here's a suggestion:

  1. Create two new HTML pages.

  2. The first page should contain the NetBlaster applet and a simple link to the second page. Set NetBlaster's Items parameters to point to several images that you know are not in your browser's cache directory yet, along with a pointer to the second page.

  3. The second page should contain <IMG SRC=> tags to load those images (no need for WIDTH=or HEIGHT= attributes).

  4. Upload both pages, the images and NetBlaster's class/cab/jar files to your server.

  5. Connect to the first page in your browser. When NetBlaster finishes its work, click the link to your second page to see the results of pre-caching.

Okay, in the test above you waited until NetBlaster had finished before moving on, which is cheating. But it should give you a good idea of the extent to which you can accelerate your site.