title: combobox selection won't load/initialize class in a new window
body: <p><strong>SEE UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM!!</strong></p>
  
  <p>I've tried to figured out how to do this for a couple of days but so far I have had no luck.</p>
  
  <p>Basically what I want to do is have a combobox, which when an option is selected <strong><em>loads an applet, and passes a value to the applet.</em></strong> 
  Here is the code for the ComboBox class, which is supposed to open the other class in a new window. The other class is the main class for an applet. They are both in the same project but in different packages. I know that there aren't any errors with the rest of the code.</p>
  
  <pre><code> //where I evaluate the selection and then open SteadyStateFusionDemo
   // more selections just showing one code block
        combo.addItemListener(new ItemListener(){
        public void itemStateChanged(ItemEvent ie){
            String str = (String)combo.getSelectedItem();
                 if (str.equals("NSTX")) {
                     machine = "A";
                     JFrame frame = new JFrame ("MyPanel2");
                     frame.setDefaultCloseOperation (JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
                     SteadyStateFusionDemo d = new SteadyStateFusionDemo();
                     frame.getContentPane().add (new SteadyStateFusionDemo());
                     d.init();
                     frame.pack();
                     frame.setVisible (true);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And just to cover everything here is the beginning of the init() method of SteadyStateFusionDemo as well as the main method in the class. Too much code to post otherwise. There are several different privates before the init method.</p>
  
  <pre><code>    //method that initializes Applet or SteadyStateFusionDemo class       
      public void init() {
  
      //main method of the SteadyStateFusionDemo class
       public static void main (String[] args) {
            JFrame frame = new JFrame ("MyPanel");
            frame.setDefaultCloseOperation (JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
            frame.getContentPane().add (new SteadyStateFusionDemo());
            frame.pack();
            frame.setVisible (true);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What am I doing wrong? Why doesn't my class load? </p>
  
  <p><strong>UPDATED: Changed the code so that a JFrame opens and then the JApplet loads inside. I have successfully done this in a test Java applet but for some odd reason it won't work with this Applet. I even set up  the test in a similar way <em>(The code for this is virtually the same, except with different class names, and of course a much, much shorter init() method).</em> Can someone help me figure out why this isn't working? Also, a JFrame will open if I delete the lines referring to SteadyStateFusionDemo, but once I reference it won't work. Why does this happen?</strong> </p>