Java Web Start with Open Web Start
Happy New Year 2024. It has been a while since my last story. As a presales engineer for more than a decade, I often have to install various development tools and programming libraries on my laptop, namely VS Code, IntelliJ, various versions of Python, Nodejs, Java, and so on — so I screw up my laptop 😓 — the application is not able to launch, throwing all kinds of errors that I couldn’t understand 😵💫. It all ended up reformating my laptop every year. In an enterprise environment, it is common to have internal applications still run based on Java Web Start, this is the journey to look for alternative starts.
Java Web Start has been deprecated for many years. Many of the classic or open JDK (Java Semeru, OpenJDK) no longer package javaws in the library anymore (Open JDK seems to include jwebstart but I couldn’t make it runs). This is where I found an alternative Open Web Start to launch the existing application.
The first step is the installation of Open Web Start. Installing Open Web Start is relatively simple, once you download the Mac installer, it appears in Application :
You may encounter an error message similar to the following in the web page that triggers the Java Web Start. It indicates the web browser failed to find javaws in your Java runtime. In this example, Download Director is the Java Web Start application based on Java Network Launching Protocol (JNLP).
You may download this file with .jnlp extension.
If you double-click the file, dont panic, it is normal to see the following error message.
The second step is to modify the default Open With setting. Right click the file, choose Get Info , under Open with section, instead of JavaLauncher , make the change to OpenWebStart javaws . Optionally you can click Change All button to save this setting permenantly for any file with.jnlp extension.
That’s all, you can proceed to double-click your .jnlp file to launch the Java Web Start application.
The only downside for this alternative is, that every time the Java Web Start tends to do different actions, in my case it will be downloading different files, then the only way is to download as a new .jnlp file and double-click.
