Name: nt126004			Date: 04/18/2003


A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
Lots of long-running apps on Windows tend to get their own "running in the background" icon on the bottom right of the screen. For example, RealPlayer does, all IM clients, etc.

I'd like to be able to use Java Webstart to automatically download, install, and upgrade an application that runs as a windows service just like RealPlayer etc. does, and that automatically gets that little icon with standard behavior whenever it is run, without having to run through major hoops as a developer.

There are lots of resources on the web how to run Java applications (deployed using traditional means) as windows service. (e.g. http://www.alexandriasc.com/software/JavaService/documentation.html, run a Google query for "Java windows service"). However, these instructions do not work with WebStart.

I suspect it would be only a relatively minor amount of work for Sun to augment WebStart in a way so JNLP-deployed applications could optionally elect to be run as such as Windows Service, and so I am logging this as an extension request.

  From a JNLP syntax perspective, it could be as simple as adding a <run-in-background/> tag, or something like that. If you wanted to be really nice, this could work on all platforms and run the app as a "nohup" app without GUI on servers for example. (But that's just a thought for the future.) The important part is to make it easy for JSE developers to develop long-running applications, which requires running in the background with the corresponding icon in the windows world.

JUSTIFICATION :
Allow developers to build long-running JSE apps.
(Review ID: 183453) 
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