Loading images for an applet from a JAR file (Swing)

Use the following sample code as a starting point.

public static ImageIcon loadImageIcon(String filename)  {
   Image image = null;

   try {
        // get a stream to read the image
        InputStream in = getClass().getResourceAsStream(filename);
        // buffering -> more efficient
        BufferedInputStream bufIn = new BufferedInputStream(in);
        // the byte array that will contain the image
        byte bytes[] = new byte[10000];
        // read the image
        int count = bufIn.read(bytes, 0, 10000);
        // create the image from the byte array
        image = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().createImage(bytes, 0, count);
   } catch(Exception e) {
        // gasp, we had a problem...
   }

   if (image != null) {
      // build up the ImageIcon
      return new ImageIcon(image);
   }  

   return null;
}

Note: we do not use getResource() instead of getResourceAsStream() because some
browsers do not allow it, for security reasons. I have assumed that ImageIcon was the
ImageIcon class from Swing.