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If you've installed the J2SE documentation, then there's a lot of JWS information available locally in <JAVA_HOME>/docs/guide/jws/index.html, including the developers guide. In J2SE 5.0, several JWS examples are in the distribution (in the sample/ directory). In earlier JWS versions, the code was scattered throughout the developers guide. The JWS home page at Sun (http://java.sun.com/products/javawebstart/) contains links to an official FAQ, technical articles, and installer demos.

In J2SE/JRE 1.4.2. or earlier, the JWS materials didn't contain the developers pack, which includes the complete JWS specification, JNLP API documentation, jardiff tool, and additional libraries. These have been folded into the main JWS release since 5.0. The pack is also available from http://java.sun.com/products/javawebstart/download-jnlp.html. The JWSt and JNLP developers forum is an active place (http://forum.java.sun.com/forum.jsp?forum=38).

The best unofficial JWS site is http://lopica.sourceforge.net/ with a lengthy FAQs page, useful reference sections, and links. However, it hasn't been updated in some time, and a lot of the FAQs page is about earlier versions of JWS.

The installer examples from Sun are at http://java.sun.com/products/javawebstart/demos.html. Another great source is Up2Go.Net (http://www.up2go.net), with installer categories including multimedia, communications, and over 40 games. Many of the games at the Java Games Factory can be downloaded using JWS, so their installers can be examined (http://grexengine.com/sections/externalgames/).

JWS and Java 3D

The ongoing work on making Java 3D available via JWS is based at https://j3d-webstart.dev.java.net.

The problems that arise when utilizing native libraries in standalone applications, JWS installers, and applets are discussed in the paper "Transparent Java Standard Extensions with Native Libraries on Multiple Platforms," available online at http://atlas.dsv.su.se/~pierre/a/papers/nativelibs.pdf. This paper is of particular interest since it uses Java 3D as its example extension with native libraries. The code is available from http://www.dsv.su.se/~adapt/im/t_nativelibs/ with an explanation in Swedish (http://www.almac.co.uk/chef/chef/chef.html).

JWS and Other Libraries

Developers using JWS with other native libraries have come across similar problems to those with JWS and Java 3D.

Xith3D is a scene graph-based 3D programming API similar to Java 3D. However, Xith3D runs on top of JOGL, a set of Java bindings for OpenGL. William Denniss has a detailed example of how to use JWS to install Xith3D at http://www.xith.org/tutes/GettingStarted/html/deploying_xith3d_games_with.html.

A brief introduction to JWS by Kevin Glass, for a space game using JOGL, is at http://www.cokeandcode.com/info/webstart-howto.html.