Having full powerful Java applications pop up out of a browser is nice, but it does need to have JRE installed on the client machine.
What one can do for the IE browser is include an ActiveX control which Sun stores on their site, if JRE is not present it will take the user through the setup process.
Below is the sample HTML so one can see how its done. Include the OBJECT section in the page with your links. Note the height=25 width=27 id="Test" border="1"is visible so you can see whats going on. You will change those params to hide it...
============================================== <HTML> <head> <title>JRE installer for IE</title> </head> <BODY><p>There is a control on this page that should in theory download and install
the JRE, if the person has IE and does not have Java installed.</p> <p>If you delivering code to IE users, may want to give it a try.</p> <!--COPY THIS STUFF TO YOUR PAGE--><OBJECT codebase="http://java.sun.com/update/1.5.0/jinstall-1_5_0_11-windows-i586.cab"; classid="clsid:5852F5ED-8BF4-11D4-A245-0080C6F74284" height=25 width=27 id="Test" border="1"> <param name="back" value="false"><!-- Alternate non IE type HTML browsers which cannot instantiate the object --> <a href="http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.html";> Download Java Runtime</a>
</OBJECT> </BODY></HTML>
