MT 1.3b50 progress

[Azhrei]

Hmm, I wonder if there's any way for Windows Explorer to look at the contents of the META-INF directory and pull out an icon image?

Probably is a way. Can't recall off the top of my head what the correct term is but a shell extension or shell handler can change what icon is seen for a given file/folder. Programs like TortoiseSVN do this.

This would really fall into Sun's court. They would need to define the standard way to store an application icon inside of the jar file and they should probably be the one to provide the program that hooks into the Windows shell.

I don't agree. I mean, from the standpoint of making it part of WebStart or the JRE, yes. But I don't think it's necessarily Sun's job to build a platform-specific tool that supports just that platform. So I guess we'll agree to disagree.

On other fronts, Google produced the following...

This page http://www.peterbuettner.de/projects/sh ... ation.html is a specification for what to put into a JAR file so that a Windows shell extension could extract the information and produce the write icons. The link at the top of the page is to a description of the sample implementation, but the page is written in German so you'll need to Babelfish it if you're not fluent in German.

This page http://weblogs.java.net/blog/enicholas/ ... r_f_1.html is a Sun employee's blog article on the topic. Read the very last user-contributed comment -- it looks like it's possible without any code using that simple hack!

[Phergus]

I don't agree. I mean, from the standpoint of making it part of WebStart or the JRE, yes. But I don't think it's necessarily Sun's job to build a platform-specific tool that supports just that platform. So I guess we'll agree to disagree.

I guess that depends on whether or not Sun wants Java perceived as a viable platform for producing real applications. As your links point out there are at least a few people who think that integration should happen.

This page http://weblogs.java.net/blog/enicholas/ ... r_f_1.html is a Sun employee's blog article on the topic. Read the very last user-contributed comment -- it looks like it's possible without any code using that simple hack!

Clever hack but as was discussed in the blog post and comments the real solution is for jar files (or an alternative) to be fully recognized by the OS as an actual application with all that that implies.