Missing Windows Icons on JNLP app?

Question

Jave Web Start fans:
We have been using Java Web Start since it's inception to deploy a laboratory management application onto the desktops of folks that use our laboratory .... and it's great, in our experience.
Our software has been deployed to a number of Universities and, as one of the developers of this application, I also have mutiple "instances" of our application installed locally .... running against different databases, for example, on the back end.
JWS seems to do a fine job of keeping all of the applications straight in the cache and when I open up "javaws -veiwer" I see each instance as a separate application, as I should.
On my Windows XP machine, I also have shortcuts installed on both my desktop and on the start menu .... while all instances of our application use the same icon, of the 4 icons that I have for this application, two show up properly and two show up with the generic windows "this is a shortcut" icon but don't seem to be able to find or display the proper icon image. Note: in "javaws -viewer" however, all four icons show up properly so that I know that it is there.
I am running JRE 1.6.0_03 and believe that I've only recently begun to see this behavior. I seem to recall, but can't guarantee, that when I was running JRE 1.5.0_* with it's corresponding version of JWS I was able to see all 4 icons properly on my desktop.
Has anyone else observed this behavior? Does anyone else run multiple "instances" of more-or-less the same JWS application on their desktop to be able to confirm that if you should see N copies of the same application (which are, in fact, actually N different applications that happen to use the same icon) that they see each instance of that icon properly?
Thanks for your inputs,
John

Answer 1

Andrew:
Thanks for your response. Before I try to answer some of your questions, let me start by thanking you for all of your efforts on behalf of the rest of the JWS community .... you've been a big asset in helping lots of us resolve Web Start issues. Thank you!!!
Background: Coral is a thick Java three-tier (client/server/database)application designed to help manage and operate shared laboratories with a variety of different pieces of equipment so it maintains user qualifcation lists for each tool, tracks equipment reservations and equipment usage, shows equipment status (working, some sort of problem, or broken ...), calculates charges based on usage, etc .... It's now running in about 10 different universities.
Yes, the URLs are publicly available ... but the application won't start unless and until we create a authorized login account. And, as I mentioned, it's fairly hefty: probably getting close to 10MB by the time I add up all of the jars that we bundle plus the Bouncy Castle encryption jar that we include as an externsion.
As you indicate you are busy at the moment, I won't ask you to dry to download this stuff .... but, when your schedule eases, if you are interested, Andrew, I'd be happy to create a demo login for you if you have any interest is seeing Coral for real.
However, I've checked out my JNLP files against your well-formedness checker and validator. It did grumble about me having the <update> element in front of the <security> element ... and I'm in the process of correcting that even though I don't know that this has caused me a problem.
In any event, I've got three jnlp files on a single web site:
http://snf.stanford.edu/coral/etc/coral.jnlp
http://snf.stanford.edu/coral/etc/coral-dev.jnlp
http://snf.stanford.edu/coral/etc/coral-rhel4.jnlp
These three correspond to our:
1. Production client-side running against production Solaris/Oracle servers.
2. Development client-side application running against development Solaris/Oracle servers.
3. Development client-side application running agains development Linux/Postgresql servers.
Here is the content of the production coral.jnlp file (after I reordered the <security> and <update> elements as noted above:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- JNLP File for Coral -->
<jnlp spec="1.0" codebase="http://snf.stanford.edu/coral"
     href="etc/coral.jnlp">
     <information>
          <title>Coral Remote (SNF)</title>
          <vendor>Stanford Nanofabrication Facility</vendor>
          <homepage href="http://snf.stanford.edu"/>
          <description>Open Coral Laboratory Management Software System</description>
          <description kind="short">Open Coral</description>
          <icon href="etc/coral_icon.jpg"/>
          <offline-allowed/>
          <shortcut online="true">
               <desktop/>
               <menu submenu="Coral"/>
          </shortcut>
     </information>
     <security>
          <all-permissions/>
     </security>
     <update check="timeout" policy="prompt-update"/>
     <resources>
          <j2se version="1.5+"/>
          <jar href="lib/coral.jar"/>
          <jar href="lib/config.jar"/>
          <jar href="lib/castor.jar"/>
          <jar href="lib/log4j.jar"/>
          <jar href="lib/logging.jar"/>
          <jar href="lib/logging-api.jar"/>
          <jar href="lib/xerces.jar"/>
          <jar href="lib/xml-apis.jar"/>
          <jar href="lib/xalan.jar"/>
          <jar href="lib/regexp.jar"/>
          <jar href="lib/xacml.jar"/>
          <extension href="etc/coraljce.jnlp"/>     
     </resources>
     <application-desc main-class="org.opencoral.main.Coral">
          <argument>-propertyFile=remote</argument>
          <argument>-locale=en,US</argument>
     </application-desc>
</jnlp>
The development versions have a common codebase attribute but a different href attribute. For example, in coral-dev.jnlp we use:
<jnlp spec="1.0" codebase="http://snf.stanford.edu/coral"
     href="etc/coral-dev.jnlp">
and each of the <jar> and <extention> elements are also
distinct:
          <jar href="lib/xacml-dev.jar"/>
          <extension href="etc/coraljce-dev.jnlp"/>     
so that, in principle at least, each of the three "instances" of our
application are completely unique.
Because I'm encountering problems with the icons, however, your questions to cause me to note that it is the icon image that is the one thing that is not "duplicated and renamed". In other words, in each of my 3 jnlp files, I'm pointing to the same JPG icon file:
          <icon href="etc/coral_icon.jpg"/>
I think that the task for me is to experiment with making that 3 different files (well, it will probably be the same image, but in files named coral_icon.jpg, coral_icon-dev.jpg, and coral_icon-rhel4.jpg) to see if my icon problem goes away under those circumstances.
So, Andrew, thanks for your interest in questions .... you've given me something to look at and experiment with that I hadn't considered before.
Thanks again for all of your assistance to us JWS fans ...
John