No Java in Windows XP

[Aussies-Online]

It is only recently that I discovered to my horror that people installing Windows XP on a new hard disk don't have Java. I made the discovery as I was using a friend brand new computer and went to have a look at my website.

Not only my java toolbar did not show, but there were nothing on the page to warn people that the toolbar was not showing.

My question is:
How could I insert some text in the code to warn people that they require java to see the toolbar?

I was also trying to turn java off, on my computer so that I could experiment with this. However, after ticking off everything to do with java in IE options, the toolbar is still showing.

Anyone knows who I can turn java off?

[AndrewB]

I'm not sure how you can let people know they need to install java but I don't why you have a menu in java in the first place, java applets are the slowest thing out there. Your menu could easily be done in css or javascript then your visitors don't even need java. Many people would not have java installed, that's a serious flaw having a site navigation in java!

I'll help you do it in css or javascript if you want to PM me.

[GeordieSEO]

It has been over a year that Microsoft stopped supplying the Microsoft (Java) Virtual Machine with their operating systems (they also replaced XP SP1 with SP1a which doesn't have Java).

It's to do with the settlement of one of the many court cases between Sun and Microsoft. M$ are not allowed to distribute M$ VM anymore. As part of spitting the dummy out M$ said that they aren't allowing any service packs to distributed on magazine CD's any more.

You can still download the M$ virtual machine but it has quite a few security bugs in the official Sun one is better anyway.

The biggest problem it causes for me is that the Actinic plugin for capturing credit card details securely uses Java. (Most of my current clients won't pay for an online payment service like WorldPay or Protx, luckily I'm changing companies at the end of the month.)