When a dialog is created by an applet, the dialog box behaves like a modalless dialog. For example, it's frame can be put behind the applet browser. For some env where the window can automatically pop to the top by just having the mouse focus, the modal dialog can easily be lost. Furthermore, the user can still continue to interact w/ the rest of the applet. This behavior defeats the purpose of a modal dialog and create additional problems for the application logic.

To recreate the problem, see the attachment:

TestDialog.java
TestDialogApplet.java
testdialog.html

When TestDialog is run as an application, it behaves correctly. However, when TestDialog is run in the context of the TestDialogApplet, it lost its modalness.
sofyan.nugroho@Eng 1997-06-24