New to Java

Hey folks, I originally posted about this in the Swing forum but I have since reproduced this issue with an awt textfield so my thinking is its a more general problem for me. I have searched the forums here, the netbeans users mailing list and googled to see if anyone else was seeing this problem but nothing coming up. I have only been playing with Java for about a week so I am hoping there is a simple explanation that I am missing.

I have created a test applet that illustrates the problem which I am including the source for below, it contains just 2 JTextFields and a JButton, with an action event handler for the button.

The problem is that the text defined in the two textfield components is not being returned via getText() when I run this applet in a web browser or java's appletviewer -- it does work in the Netbeans 5.5.1 IDE that I use ( I use jdk-1.6.0_01 ).

---

/*
* AndyTest.java
*
* Created on June 15, 2007, 10:33 AM
*/
import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;

/**
*
* @author Andrew
*/
public class AndyTest extends javax.swing.JApplet {
public AndyTest(){
init();
}

public static void main(String[] args){
AndyTest telnetApp = new AndyTest();

JFrame myWindow = new JFrame("TMC Telnet Client");
myWindow.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
myWindow.setContentPane( telnetApp );//add to the window
myWindow.pack();
myWindow.setVisible(true);

}
/** Initializes the applet AndyTest */
public void init() {
try {
java.awt.EventQueue.invokeAndWait(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
initComponents();
}
});
} catch (Exception ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
}
}

/** This method is called from within the init() method to
* initialize the form.
* WARNING: Do NOT modify this code. The content of this method is
* always regenerated by the Form Editor.
*/
// <editor-fold defaultstate="collapsed" desc=" Generated Code ">
private void initComponents() {
jUsername = new javax.swing.JTextField();
jPassword = new javax.swing.JTextField();
jLoginButton = new javax.swing.JButton();

jLoginButton.setText("Login");
jLoginButton.addActionListener(new java.awt.event.ActionListener() {
public void actionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) {
jLoginButtonActionPerformed(evt);
}
});

javax.swing.GroupLayout layout = new javax.swing.GroupLayout(getContentPane());
getContentPane().setLayout(layout);
layout.setHorizontalGroup(
layout.createParallelGroup(javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.LEADING)
.addGroup(layout.createSequentialGroup()
.addGap(102, 102, 102)
.addGroup(layout.createParallelGroup(javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.LEADING)
.addGroup(javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.TRAILING, layout.createParallelGroup(javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.TRAILING, false)
.addComponent(jPassword, javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.LEADING)
.addComponent(jUsername, javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.LEADING, javax.swing.GroupLayout.PREFERRED_SIZE, 138, javax.swing.GroupLayout.PREFERRED_SIZE))
.addGroup(javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.TRAILING, layout.createSequentialGroup()
.addComponent(jLoginButton)
.addGap(36, 36, 36)))
.addContainerGap(111, Short.MAX_VALUE))
);
layout.setVerticalGroup(
layout.createParallelGroup(javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.LEADING)
.addGroup(layout.createSequentialGroup()
.addGap(84, 84, 84)
.addComponent(jUsername, javax.swing.GroupLayout.PREFERRED_SIZE, javax.swing.GroupLayout.DEFAULT_SIZE, javax.swing.GroupLayout.PREFERRED_SIZE)
.addPreferredGap(javax.swing.LayoutStyle.ComponentPlacement.RELATED)
.addComponent(jPassword, javax.swing.GroupLayout.PREFERRED_SIZE, javax.swing.GroupLayout.DEFAULT_SIZE, javax.swing.GroupLayout.PREFERRED_SIZE)
.addPreferredGap(javax.swing.LayoutStyle.ComponentPlacement.RELATED)
.addComponent(jLoginButton)
.addContainerGap(101, Short.MAX_VALUE))
);
}// </editor-fold>

private void jLoginButtonActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) {
System.out.println( "COMPONENTS- Username: " + jUsername.getText() + " Password: " + jPassword.getText() );
}


String sUsername = new String();
String sPassword = new String();

// Variables declaration - do not modify
private javax.swing.JButton jLoginButton;
private javax.swing.JTextField jPassword;
private javax.swing.JTextField jUsername;
// End of variables declaration

}


---

I have tried several event handlers on the textfields but getText() doesn't return anything in each case when the applet is run in a browser or appletviewer.

I would greatly appreciate any help in figuring this out.

Thanks,
Andy