java web start alternative

Question

We're looking for an alternative to Java web start that effectively does the same thing, just better implemented. We're having massive trouble with it. We have a few offices of XP desktops, all slightly different and so far only a handful have worked without serious tweaking. Problems are to do with not playing nicely with the proxy settings (using direct connection in Java control panel allows it to work), refusing to run when params like "-Xmx" are set but running fine when they aren't (until it runs out of memory) and other odd problems that we can't fix.

The way web start works is exactly what we want, i.e. connecting to a server that has the app, downloading anything that's changed, keeping a cache of jars, etc. Other teams here use 'clickonce' for their C# apps and it does effectively the same thing but seems to be less trouble.

I'm convinced we're not the only people to have run into this but searching around doesn't really show any alternatives. We've looked into writing a stub local application that is essentially just a URLClassLoader that loads up our app over the network on the fly but unfortunately that's too slow from other offices. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

Answer 1

I find all your probles quite strange. i've worked during a certain time in a company distributing its trading software using JWS, and it always worked really fine. Have you considering taking a look at the unofficial Java web start FAQ before dropping the whole technology ?

Answer 2

My company is also experiencing webstart pain especially with jre 1.6 update 19 and 20. Our problems revolve around the Mixed Code security warning. (everything is properly signed and the problem is intermittent)

Anyhoo I stumbled across getdown by threerings. I haven't tried it yet, but seems promising http://www.threerings.net/code/getdown/