Creating manual shortcuts

Question

We have the good fortune of working in a locked down desktop
environment, so we will be distributing the shortcut and icon for
our Web Start application to all user machines on a scheduled
internal "Bus". My questions are, for those that have created or
pre-distributed shortcuts to their Web Start apps before:
1) Do you explicitly reference the javaws executable is in your
shortcut properties, as in:
%ProgramFiles%\Java\j2re1.4.2_05\javaws\javaws.exe URLor do you simply list the URL, and leave it up to your browser to
figure out what application to launch it with?
2) I was thinking of generating the contents of my JNLP file using a
Servlet. If I were to do that, does the URL that I use in my
shortcut have to end in .jnlp if I only reference a URL (and not the
javaws executable) in the shortcut?
Thanks,
Mike

Answer 1

The best way to use create the shortcut on windows is to point to the javaws.exe in the windows directory.
(on my XP this is in "C:\Windows\system32\javaws.exe") , or beter yet just use "javaws.exe" and let system find it in the path.
That way if the version of javaws is updated, it will still point to the newest one.
Secondly, if you just point to a jnlp file, the default browser may be launched, so it's beter to point the shortcut to "javaws http://www.mycompany.com/myapp.jnlp"
Third, using second form you could point to servlet or jsp with args:
"javaws.exe http://www.mycompany.com/myapp.jsp?session=none user=none"
/Dietz