nm this apparently it's not he site
http://www.java.com/en/download/help/testvm.xml
this one doesn't work either.
i did the following,
i downloaded j2eesdk-1_4-linux.bin
made it executable then ran it
i went thru the whole install
then i did locate firefox plugin and found /usr/lib/firefox-1.0/plugins
so i cd /usr/lib/firefox-1.0/plugins and then ln -sf /usr/lib/jre/lib/i386/libjavaplugin_jni.so
as per the instructions i received on fedora faq page
any sugg?