About IcedTea-Web
IcedTea-Web as a Solution to Replace Java Web Start
IcedTea-Web is an opensource reimplementation of the Java Web Start technology, released under the GPL with Classpath Exception. It provides the most commonly used features of Java Web Start and the JNLP standard, so that users can continue running applications based on Java Web Start and JNLP without any change. IcedTea-Web follows the JNLP-specification defined in JSR-56.
Azul provides builds of IcedTea-Web for multiple platforms. It should not be considered as a drop-in replacement and sometimes requires additional migration efforts. Our experience in large corporate projects, shows that a drop-in success rate of 95% is reached for applications switching from WebStart to IcedTea-Web. Azul Platform Core customers can contact [email protected] for any technical question or problem regarding IcedTea-Web.
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Note
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IcedTea-Web is tested and compatible with version 8 of Azul Zulu Builds of OpenJDK. Support for version 11 is not tested and is not an officially supported combination, but in our experience, IcedTea-Web generally works with Zulu 11. Other Zulu versions are not known to work with IcedTea-Web. |
History of Java Web Start
Java Web Start was a deployment technology, which allowed for an application to automatically install and update when the user runs it. It has been part of Java since version 5. Java Web Start applications were configured through files with the .jnlp extension for Java Network Launch Protocol (JNLP). The JNLP extension was associated with the javaws.exe such that a Java Web Start application can be launched in the browser by double clicking it or from the command line with javaws <jnlp file or URL>.
Java Web Start never became a part of the Java Standard (Java SE) and the source code was never released by Sun. It therefore was not made part of the OpenJDK. It was considered safer than Applets, but not safe enough for the Internet. Java Web Start has been deprecated for a while now.