New WebStart Behavior with Java 7 Update 21

Question

I’ve been working on this off and on for a couple of weeks and non-stop since yesterday with just a couple of developers. Opening up this discussion to everyone in hopes someone has some ideas.

We have an Eclipse RCP application that is launched via WebStart. We’ve been running on Java 7 update 17 and the only prompt we saw when launching our application was "Do you want to run this application".

With the upgrade to Java 7 Update 21, we are now seeing Install Java Extension, Do you want to install thie following software? 14 times for different JAR files.

Based on this website

http://java.com/en/download/help/appsecuritydialogs.xml#trusted

Java application prompts which include these images present lower risk.

The Java logo or publishers logo represents an application that is identified by a valid certificate from a trusted Certificate Authority (CA).

Blue information shield indicates that the application can be identified by a valid certificate and more information is available.

I tried clicking the “More Information” but it has no effect. Does anyone know why I’m seeing these additional dialogs and how to stop this behavior?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Due to the security issues of Desktop Java (Applets and Webstart) Oracle now tightened the restrictions and changed the dialogs. (See the Release notes of the update). according to a speech on the JAX2013 conference in April, there will be even more restrictions after the planned October 2013 update.