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One thing that has bothered me (and recently one of my customers) a lot was that we could not display Eclipse RCP splash screens when starting the application using Java WebStart. But now I got it working, here is the recipe:

1) In your main jnlp file, add

<application-desc main-class="org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.WebStartMain">
    <argument>-showsplash</argument>
</application-desc>

2) In the resources section, add the following 4 properties.

<property name="osgi.instance.area" value="@user.home/<your_app>"/>
<property name="osgi.install.area" value="@user.home/<your_app>/osgi"/>
<property name="osgi.configuration.area" value="@user.home/<your_app>"/>
<property name="osgi.splashPath" value="platform:/base/plugins/<your_bundle_that_contains_splash.bmp>"/>

3) For all operating systems that might wanna run your webstarted app, add the launcher respective fragments, e.g. for Win and Win64:

<resources os="Windows" arch="x86">
    <jar href="plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.win32.win32.x86_1.1.100.v20110502.jar"/>
</resources>
<resources os="Windows" arch="x86_64">
    <jar href="plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.win32.win32.x86_64_1.1.100.v20110502.jar"/>
</resources>

That should be it. I have already added the Windows fragments for my MP3 Manager Demo, so when you start it under Windows, you should see the RCP splash screen.  I will add the remaining fragments for other operating systems later…

You can WebStart MP3 Manager here:

Have Fun!

Kai

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