JWS overly invasive & too coarse.

General Discussions
#1

Windows installers that use InstallShield have explicit prompting for many parameters of the installation process.

JWS apps. appear to have only a “do you trust your life upon this application? yes/no” dialog.

While I freely trust most/all Javas apps. to not execute malicious code on my machine, I do not wish to grant it the rights to add numerous irritating entries to my start menu that are completely at odds to my personal start menu configuration, and entirely unconfigurable.

I would also prefer that my control panel -> view installed programs, wasn’t polluted by dozens of tiny Java apps.
IMO a distinction needs to be made between a small application whose installation & removal is managed by the JWS sub-system, and a larger application who wishes to be considered a first-class citizen of the ‘installed application’ list

Thoughts anyone?

#2

IMHO Webstart is confused as to whether it’s trying to replace applets or replace InstallShield. I like the applet-like behaviour it gives (single click launch from a browser, auto download and start, autoupdate) and this works especially well for the Games Showcase where I just want to play as soon as possible. I’m much less keen on the InstallShield-like behaviour - adding shortcuts to start menus, entries in add/remove programs, etc. because as you say they’re unconfigurable and often unwanted.

It’d be nice if webstart was configurable enought to do both extremes. Applet-like webstart apps wouldn’t add start menu items, wouldn’t appear in add/remove programs, and wouldn’t ever expose the cached version to the user (much like you never care or see your browsers cache). Basically, after you’d played it, there wouldn’t be any visible trace on your system at all. At the other end of the scale InstallShield-like webstart apps would use a series of wizard-style windows and ask for a dir to be installed in, where you want shortcuts to be placed, etc. At the end of this you’d have a locally installed app which you could run from the start menu or from the install dir itself, with the only difference being that if you were online it might also download updates automatically.

#3

Absolutely agree, and one day, maybe, someone will add a skilled UI designer to the budget for the webstart team, and within a few weeks you’ll have a lovely simple-yet-effective GUI that gives one-click ease side-by-side with configurability.

Whilse we’re bitching … how come you STILL cannot re-run any programs from webstart, and STILL cannot find what programs are on your hard disk, without either finding and running a binary that’s hidden away in a remote directory in the jvm install and/or creating an appropriate browser link for yourself to click on?

#4

Not to say WS isn’t a bag of shite but…

You can’t? I can.

What about the ability of webstart to desktop shortcuts?

Kev

#5

What we need is “webstart meets NSIS”.

Cas :slight_smile:

#6

well not entirely…

configuration screen -> java

#7

Um, you cut off the second half of the sentence. I know it was a looong sentence, but the full sentence was necessary to make the point :).

When I realise I want to re-run a program, that I saw on a site “somewhere, can’t remember where” and I know I ran it via webstart, because I did NOT download it, I can’t just go to my “downloads” folder and re-run it, nor is it installed on my start menu so I can’t find it there, and it’s certainly not a shortcut because, like many windows users, I don’t use/have any shortcuts - they’re a waste of time, thousands of the buggers most of which I don’t want but are created automatically, and anyway they only appear on that “desktop” thing which I never see (because I have circa 50 windows in front of it). I do use quicklaunch, but only for things I use, well, … often. And webstart won’t stick things on the quicklaunch bar anyway, so that’s no use anyway.

However, I know, as a java developer, that there is a special program that I could run that will show me all the programs I downloaded via webstart, will let me auto-update them, will let me launch them directly from the cache etc. It’s just … Sun doesn’t add it to your start menu nor the control panel nor - AFAICT - anywhere else … so it’s pretty much useless for the majority of users :(.

#8

they should fix this togetter with silent auto-update, just update during free cycles already and in the background use a checkbox while installing and enable it by default. it isn’t gonna likely crash the system, nor does it require restarts, no need to mirror windows update.