url parameters in jnlp href attribute

Question

I've been using url parameters to pass arguments to the main-method of the .jar application. After updating to latest jre 7u7 on windows 7, Java-web-start launcher crashes when launching the files.

(JNLP download-servlet and jsp-page parses the url-parameters and inputs them in the argument further down)

The interesting parts of the jsp

<jnlp spec="6.0+" codebase="http://localhost:8080/" href="myfile.jnlp?username=charles">
    ...
    <application-desc main-class="MyMain">
        <argument><%=request.getParameter("username")%></argument>
    </application-desc>
</jnlp>

So this might or might not be a bug,

Q1: have I been using the href-attribute in a correct way?

Q2: Any smart ideas how to get around the problem?

Answer 1

I get the same problem today. I didn't find anything on the net, but I tried to replace the '?' with the HTML entity '?' and it works.