[quote]I think, however, that jws is currently only good for opensource, freeware or beta testing.
[/quote]
Hm, I give JWS a little more credit than that. Wurm Online is a good example where JWS makes perfect sense and where it’s used well.
Webstart’s not popular with random punters though. Works in a corporate environment well but not so good in the internet at large. It’s a sort of remote installer with most of the features you want missing. NSIS all the way for me.
Cas 
I plan on storing local high scores on the users pc like i did with my flash version. Will i need to do anything special if i’m writting it as an applet like i am now or should i convert all my code to an application and use web start to write the local high scores on the users pc?
EDIT: i want to do something like this: http://www.puppygames.net/downloads/shared/test/TreasureTomb.jnlp where a user clicks on the webstart file to install the applet to his machine, shortcut are created and the user can play it anytime he wants. He also can get the latest update by visiting my site, although not required to play. Can i use ws to install applets like this or is that an application infact he is using?
Here is the authors jnlp code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- JNLP File for Treasure Tomb -->
<jnlp
spec="1.0+"
codebase="http://www.puppygames.net"
href="downloads/shared/test/TreasureTomb.jnlp">
<information>
<title>Treasure Tomb</title>
<vendor>Puppy Games</vendor>
<homepage href="http://www.puppygames.net/"/>
<description>Explore the tomb, find treasure, and escape!/description>
<description kind="short">Explore the tomb, find treasure, and escape!</description>
<icon href="http://www.puppygames.net/applets/treasuretomb_icon.gif" kind="default"/>
<shortcut online="true">
<desktop/>
<menu submenu="Games"/>
</shortcut>
</information>
<security>
<all-permissions/>
</security>
<resources>
<j2se version="1.4+"/>
<jar href="downloads/shared/test/alloy.jar"/>
<jar href="downloads/shared/test/lwjgl.jar"/>
<jar href="downloads/shared/test/lwjgl_util.jar"/>
<jar href="downloads/shared/test/spgl-lite.jar"/>
<jar href="downloads/shared/test/jorbis.jar"/>
<jar href="downloads/shared/test/jinput.jar"/>
<jar href="downloads/shared/test/common.jar" main="true"/>
<jar href="downloads/shared/test/gamecommerce.jar"/>
<jar href="downloads/shared/test/TreasureTomb.jar"/>
</resources>
<resources os="Windows">
<j2se version="1.4+"/>
<nativelib href="downloads/shared/test/lwjgl-windows.jar"/>
<property name="java.library.path" value="." />
<property name="org.lwjgl.util.Debug" value="true" />
</resources>
<resources os="Linux" arch="i386">
<j2se version="1.4+"/>
<nativelib href="downloads/shared/test/lwjgl-linux.jar"/>
<property name="java.library.path" value="." />
</resources>
<resources os="Mac OS X">
<j2se version="1.4+"/>
<nativelib href="downloads/shared/test/lwjgl-osx.jar"/>
<property name="java.library.path" value="." />
</resources>
<j2se version="1.4+" initial-heap-size="32m" max-heap-size="64m" java-vm-args="-Xincgc"/>
<application-desc main-class="net.puppygames.applet.Launcher">
<argument>/resources.dat</argument>
</application-desc>
</jnlp>
Java doesn’t have speed related problems anymore. Java just uses a little too much memory. 
Ok thank you, but can someone answer my question above?
Fortunately this flaw is being addressed by a highly complex loss-less O(0) compression mechanism known as ‘poor grammar’ ™.
On words such as “too”, and “till”, ‘poor grammar’ ™ obtains compression factors in the range of 0.2 - 0.5 !
The only limitation of the ‘poor grammar’ ™ compression schema is a small build up of ‘irritation’ in the decoder, depending on the particulars of the decoder this may lead to the decoding process aborting, with an IrritatingTextException being thrown.
(a) Storing high scores on the web only needs php on the server side and nothing special from Java.
(b) Treasure tomb installs using web start and nothing else, in fact all web-start applets install (in some form or another). Also note that it does not even require permissions, however the user will be prompted
So i don’t need to do anything to use my applet as a web start applet?
off topic @ abuse : I was just leaving so I had to write that fast.
Well if it’s web-start then you’d write it as a normal Java application using frames, etc. You have to store resources/files in Jar files and access them using getResource, but first worry about getting it running and then tackle resource loading after.
You should be able to run the applet without making any changes through Java Webstart using the
applet-desc
tag in JNLP. Some more details here:
http://java.sun.com/products/javawebstart/1.2/docs/developersguide.html
Kev
Thanks, just what i needed.