Cheap SSL Certificates and Java

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... don't always go so well together.

We recently had an SSL certificate expire. Getting a new one was a bit of an adventure (best told another time). In brief, we got a cheap SSL cert from godaddy.

They claim 99% browser recognition and that's true at least for recent versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer. It's not true for most installations of the Java runtime.

I didn't record the details, but some versions of the JRE throw a nasty exception. At least one version was bit more friendly, at least asking the user if they wanted to continue although the certificate was not trusted. Only the 1.5.0_02 update fixes the issue.

Quick tip: when using Java Web Start, a plus sign in the JNLP file can help.

  <j2se version="1.5+"/>
  <j2se version="1.4+"/>

This indicates that a recent of 1.5 version (or newer) is ideal but a recent version of 1.4 will do in a pinch.