Customizing Your Application (Windows)

With the release of Wrapper version 3.3.7, the Wrapper provides the ability to change some of its resources and to customize its appearance on Windows.

When customizing the Wrapper binary "wrapperW.exe", a new version of the binary will be created with the new resources specified with the "--customize" command. The resulting binary will be locked, meaning that it is no longer possible to customize it.

When creating a new customer binary, any of the following arguments can be combined. The "--target {target.exe}" argument is always required.

Please note that the paths of all file names are relative to the location of the Wrapper binary, not necessarily relative to the location of the caller. For example, the following command will create the target file in the same directory as the wrapperW.exe binary and expect to find the new icon and splashscreen in that directory as well:

bin\wrapperw.exe --customize --target myapp.exe --icon myicon.ico --splash mysplash.bmp

When the Wrapper binary is customized, it is necessary to always specify a new file name for the customized version. The Wrapper will always overwrite the file if it already exists.

wrapperw.exe --target myapp.exe

Putting the parameter all together would result to a command line like this:

bin\wrapperw.exe --customize --icon MyIcon.ico --splash MySplash.bmp --target MyApp.exe

This command will create a new executable MyApp.exe in the same directory the wrapperW.exe is located, with a customized Icon and Splash Screen.

NOTE

This function requires either Standard or Professional Edition of the Java Service Wrapper.

The Wrapper is shipped with a default icon, however the Wrapper has proven to be also an excellent Application launcher, for this purpose a software developer may wish to replace the Icon with that of the product the Wrapper is being used with.

The icon file is a standard multi layer icon file that contains all of the resolution and icon sizes that need to be supported.

wrapperw.exe --target myapp.exe --icon myicon.ico

The following is a screenshot of a directory containing a customized MyApp.exe along with renamed copies of the three Java Service Wrapper Editions and their default icons.

NOTE

This function requires either Standard or Professional Edition of the Java Service Wrapper.

The consoleless version of the Wrapper, wrapperW.exe, will by default show a splash screen on startup. This splash screen can be customized with an image representing the product that the Wrapper is being used with.

Having the Wrapper display a splash screen rather than doing so from within Java has the benefit of making the applications startup seem very responsive because the splash screen will be displayed before the JVM is launched and can remain visible as the Java application's classes are loaded and initialized.

The way the splash screen behaves can be controled with the wrapper.splashscreen.mode property.

This argument is illegal for the wrapper.exe binary because it does not display a splash screen.

wrapperw.exe --target myapp.exe --splash mysplash.bmp

Currently only bitmap (*.bmp) files are supported. There are no size or bit-depth restrictions set.

Default Java Service Wrapper Professional Edition splash screen.

Default Java Service Wrapper Standard Edition splash screen.

Example custom splash screen.