Java.lang bad major version error

[John Toozen]

Yes, I'm a greenhorn paper pusher but trying to get back in the saddle!
I'm trying to run some simple applets from Dietel's version 3 book and get this error above in Netscape. My SDK and JRE environments are the latest and greatest.
Help!!! [e-mail]

[John Toozen]

Don't bother with this question! I got it to work work the applet viewer. Still a bit confused cause I thought it should just fire up when I pulled up the HTML in the browser - and I know some applets will work that way...

[Marilyn de Queiroz]

Your JVM supports an earlier version of a class but the applet was compiled with a later version. When this happens you might see the following message in the Java console or message bar:
# Applet exception: error: java.lang.ClassFormatError: Bad major version number

You have two choices
1) Download the Sun plug-in
2) Compile with the "-target 1.1" option

Option #2 won't work if you are using Swing.