Here is a simple "active page": active the two active applets (two words) write into a third applet. this could be used for rollovers, or popups, for example.
Here is another simple "active page": babble the four applets babble at each other continuously. this could be used to connect to servers or for server push or for active displays.
and a third (this is a bit of a giggle :) control
All of these work under ns 4.5 and ns 4.7 and ie 4.0 on both nt and 98. please try them on the mac, linux, solaris, etc but i would be vastly surprised if they don't work on any platform with any java-capable browser.
NOTE: neither of these sets of applets are guaranteed to work across frames of one webpage! for security reasons, the two main browsers load applets from different frames in different classloaders, so they may or may not share the same jvm depending on how netscape and microsoft hackers feel that day. just one more wonderful compatibility issue. the safest bet is to only attempt communication within the same html page (which is another good reason that frames suck). and if you need visual separation the best thing is tables, not frames. since we have server-side control we can even serve up tables dynamically.