I've just started writing a simple web browser in Java and one thing I've noticed is that on google's website, for example, hitting enter or clicking on the search button doesn't actually do anything. I've read that this is because these are based on javascript and currently since I'm using a JEditorPane for my browser window, I can't support this.

First of all, someone confirm that this is the issue with things like this. And, in order to get this to work, is there any way I can do it with the JEditorPane or am I going to have to go a different way? And if I have to go a different way, what direction should I look?

It will be easier for you to base your work on jdic browser.
Judging by the questions you are asking, sorry but i must tell you that doing it all by your own IS NOT a medium/beginner task... if it was you would see lots of feature-full java based browsers...

screenshot
http://javadesktop.org/articles/jdic...rowser_jds.jpg

to run the demo
http://javadesktop.org/jdic/demo/Browser/browser.jnlp

An article
http://javadesktop.org/articles/jdic/index.html

Homepage
https://jdic.dev.java.net/

Well, thanks for the info, but is there an answer to be had for my other questions?

If the button doesn't nothing, it is because you didn't code an event for it :-). There is no magic, you write the events for button click, keyboard mappings,mouse behaviour(right click), url navigation.

This page might help you :
http://www.apl.jhu.edu/~hall/java/Sw...ditorPane.html

There is an effort for a swing xhtml renderer at https://xhtmlrenderer.dev.java.net/. Indeed, jeditorpane only support html 3.x, old css,etc. so it doesn't play well with lots of pages.

You will have to investigate for the real part(javascript, flash and the rest).

FYI:
The browser from sun microsystems(who create java you know) called hotjava which is at version 3.0, i think, is far from being complete. The css, html support is old and won't work for some web sites. I don't know if they supported flash and the recent css specifications.

hotjava is supposed to be opensource by Sun someday. When it will be you can try to improve it for your needs.