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Greeting Card Maker

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©1996-2017 Roedy Green of Canadian Mind Products
Unfortunately, Oracle has effectively decommitted Applets. This means you can no longer run the various CMP programs in a browser. You must download them and install them. You must have the most recent Java JRE (Java Runtime Environment) 1.8.0_131 32-bit or 64-bit. It no longer matters which browser you use.
Oracle has effectively decommited Applets, so this Applet will no longer run online in your browser, but it is a hybrid you can also download, install and run it on your own machine as standalone application. It will start and run faster if you do that. It will also work safely even if you have disabled Java in your browser.

Introduction Futures
How To Print a Greeting Card Java Requirements and Troubleshooting
Applet Card Stock
Printer Margins Links
Contents

Introduction

This Applet will let you create full-colour greeting cards on your ink-jet printer using your own images. It should be simple enough for anyone to use even a child. You don’t even need to install any software.

half fold card stock All you need is a colour inkjet printer, some half-fold 8.5 × 11 card stock that you can buy at any stationery store. It looks like the icon to the right.

How To Print a Greeting Card

  1. Tell your browser to give the Applet permission to run. (usually at the very top).
  2. Click chooseimagebutton and select an image off your hard drive that you may have found and downloaded somewhere on the Internet, ideally a fairly big image about 5100 × 3300 pixels (wide or tall) to get a good quality print. It might be a digital photograph of you or a loved one. The program automatically scales and crops the image.
  3. Optionally, select how wide of margins you want or leave them at the default 0.3".
  4. Insert some half-fold card stock in your printer.
  5. Click printbutton. It automatically selects portrait (wide image with the fold on the top ) or landscape (tall image, printed sideways, with the fold on the left). That’s it.

Applet

Applet failed to run. No Java 1.8 or later plug-in found.

Printer Margins

Only the most expensive printers can do a full bleed — print right to the edges of the paper. Most printers need side margins to allow a place to pull the paper that will not be coated in wet ink. For example, the HP (Hewlett Packard) LaserJet 1200 can print with a 0.35" margin on the left, a 0.25" margin on the right and 0.15" on the bottom. The Canon MP 210 Inkjet gets even closer to the edges with 0.3" margins on the sides and 0.1" margins on top and bottom.

If you ask the GreetingCard program to use margins smaller than your printer is capable of, nothing terrible will happen. You will just get wider margins than you asked for and the image will be slightly chopped off. To find out what your printer is capable of, ask for 0 margins and see close it can print to the edge of the paper.

Contents

A greeting card has a front and back and in inside top and bottom. This Applet just prints the front with an image, no text. If you want to print the other panels, that is fairly easy to do with a word processor or paint program like PaintShop Pro, or even better, hand-write them with a fountain pen.

Futures

If you find this program useful, I will extend it:

  1. Ability to manually fine-tune the cropping and scaling in a way that does not require artistic skill.
  2. Proper logo.
  3. Ability to print a pattern on the back of the card.
  4. Ability to print a greeting inside the card.

Java Requirements and Troubleshooting

GreetingCard is a signed Java Applet (that can also be run as an application) to Print greeting cards. You are welcome to install it on your own website. If it does not work…
  1. For this Applet hybrid to work, you must click grant/accept/always run on this site/I accept the risk to give it permission to let you access the printer from within your browser. If you refuse to grant permission, the program may crash with an inscrutable stack dump on the console complaining about AccessController.checkPermission.
  2. In the Java Control Panel security tab, click Start ⇒ Control Panel ⇒ Programs ⇒ Java ⇒ Security, configure medium security to allow self-signed and vanilla unsigned applets to run. If medium is not available, or if Java security is blocking you from running the program, configure high security and add http://mindprod.com to the Exception Site List at the bottom of the security tab.
  3. Often problems can be fixed simply by clicking the reload button on your browser.
  4. Make sure you have both JavaScript and Java enabled in your browser.
  5. Make sure the Java in your browser is enabled in the security tab of the Java Control panel. Click Start ⇒ Control Panel ⇒ Programs ⇒ Java ⇒ Security ⇒ Enable Java Content in the browser.
  6. This signed Java Applet (that can also be run as an application) needs 32-bit or 64-bit Java 1.8 or later. For best results use the latest 1.8.0_131 Java.
  7. You also need a recent browser.
  8. It works under any operating system that supports Java e.g. W2K, XP, W2003, Vista, W2008, W7-32, W7-64, W8-32, W8-64, W2012, W10-32, W10-64, Linux, LinuxARM, LinuxX86, LinuxX64, Ubuntu, Solaris, SolarisSPARC, SolarisSPARC64, SolarisX86, SolarisX64 and OSX
  9. You should see the Applet hybrid above looking much like this screenshot. If you don’t, the following hints should help you get it working:
  10. Optionally, you may permanently install the Canadian Mind Products code-signing certificate so you don’t have to grant each time.
  11. If the above Applet hybrid appears to freeze-up, click Alt-Esc repeatedly to check for any buried permission dialog box.
  12. If you have certificate troubles, check the installed certificates and remove or update any obsolete or suspected defective certificates. The only certificate used by this program is mindprodcert2017rsa.cer.
  13. Especially if this Applet hybrid has worked before, try clearing the browser cache and rebooting.
  14. To ensure your Java is up to date, check with Wassup. First, download it and run it as an application independent of your browser, then run it online as an Applet to add the complication of your browser.
  15. If the above Applet hybrid does not work, check the Java console for error messages.
  16. If the above Applet hybrid does not work, you might have better luck with the downloadable version available below.
  17. If you are using Mac OS X and would like an improved Look and Feel, download the QuaQua look & feel from randelshofer.ch/quaqua. UnZip the contained quaqua.jar and install it in ~/Library/Java/Extensions or one of the other ext dirs.
  18. Upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer or another browser.
  19. Click the Information bar, and then click Allow blocked content. Unfortunately, this also allows dangerous ActiveX code to run. However, you must do this in order to get access to perfectly-safe Java Applets running in a sandbox. This is part of Microsoft’s war on Java.
  20. Try upgrading to a more recent version of your browser, or try a different browser e.g. Firefox, SeaMonkey, IE or Avant.
  21. If you still can’t get the program working click the red HELP button below for more detail.
  22. If you can’t get the above Applet hybrid working after trying the advice above and from the red HELP button below, have bugs to report or ideas to improve the program or its documentation, please send me an email atemail Roedy Green.
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Card Stock

Here are some places you can get card stock:

Birthday card maker student project

This page is posted
on the web at:

 http://mindprod.com/applet/greetingcard.html

Optional Replicator mirror
of mindprod.com
on local hard disk J:

 J:\mindprod\applet\greetingcard.html
Canadian Mind Products
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