🚀 go-pugleaf

You can ignore the last post. Further research has revealed the following
which solved my dilemma:

 JLabel label = new JLabel();
 public void setLabelIcon(Object newValue)
 {
   try
   {
        String st = (String)newValue;
        st = st.toLowerCase();
        if((st.indexOf("gif") == -1) && (st.indexOf("jpg") == -1))
        {
             JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "The URL provided does not
contain a\nreference to either a gif or jpg image!", "Image URL",
JOptionPane.PLAIN_MESSAGE);
             return;
        }
        ImageIcon icon = new ImageIcon(new URL(st));
        int status = icon.getImageLoadStatus();
        if(status == MediaTracker.ABORTED || status == MediaTracker.ERRORED)
        {
          JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "The URL provided is not
valid!\nPlease check your syntax.", "Image URL", JOptionPane.PLAIN_MESSAGE);
          return;
        }
        label.setIcon(icon);
        label.setText("");
   }
   catch(Exception e)
   {
           JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "The URL provided is
malformed!\nBe sure it begins with \"http://\"", "Image URL",
JOptionPane.PLAIN_MESSAGE);
   }

 }