Question: I have a Java applet consisting of a wizard-like form with three steps. At the final step, the user can click a "finish" button. I want that button to cause the web browser to navigate to a specific URL.

**Question:** Is there a way to cause the browser to navigate to a specific URL, in such a way that it will work across all modern browsers? My specific browser requirements are FF3+, IE7+, Safari 3+, and Opera 9+. I am using Java 1.5.

Answer: 
From the applet you can simply get the applet context and call [showDocument(url)](http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/applet/AppletContext.html#showDocument(java.net.URL)).

This will navigate away from the current page to the specified URL:

```
getAppletContext().showDocument(url);

```

Additionally you can pass a [target](http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/applet/AppletContext.html#showDocument(java.net.URL,%20java.lang.String)) parameter.

To visit a relative URL you can use:

```
URL url = new URL(getCodeBase().getProtocol(),
                          getCodeBase().getHost(),
                          getCodeBase().getPort(),
                          "/next.html");
getAppletContext().showDocument(url);

```

These work in every major browser since Java version 1.1.
```
String googleURL = "https://www.google.com/";

try {
   java.awt.Desktop.getDesktop().browse(java.net.URI.create(googleURL));    
}
catch(IOException ex) {    
    Logger.getLogger(UI.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE,null, ex);    
}

```