Java Web Start seems to work best on Firefox. When you click on the Launch button on either of these
sites in Firefox, the browser will ask if you want to open a file called jenkins.jnlp using Java Web
Start. Click on OK—this will download Jenkins and start it up on your machine (see Figure 2.5, “Java
Web Start will download and run the latest version of Jenkins”).
Figure 2.5. Java Web Start will download and run the latest version of Jenkins
In other browsers, clicking on this button may simply download the JNLP file. In Internet Explorer, you
may even need to right click on the link and select “Save Target As” to save the JNLP file, and then run
it from Windows Explorer. However, in both of these cases, when you open the JNLP file, Java Web
Start will download and start Jenkins.
Java Web Start will only need to download a particular version of Jenkins once. From then on, when
you click on the “Launch” button again, Java Web Start will use the copy of Jenkins it has already
downloaded (that is, until the next version comes out). Ignore any messages your operating system or
anti-virus software may bring up—it is perfectly safe to run Jenkins on your local machine.
Once it has finished downloading, it will start up Jenkins on your machine. You will be able to see it
running in a small window called “Jenkins Console” (see Figure 2.6, “Java Web Start running Jenkins”).
To stop Jenkins at any time, just close this window.
Figure 2.6. Java Web Start running Jenkins