Loading resources using getClass().getResource()

You can request a path in this format:

/package/path/to/the/resource.ext

Even the bytes for creating the classes in memory are found this way:

my.Class -> /my/Class.class

and getResource will give you a URL which can be used to retrieve an InputStream.

But... I'd recommend using directly getClass().getResourceAsStream(...) with the same argument, because it returns directly the InputStream and don't have to worry about creating a (probably complex) URL object that has to know how to create the InputStream.

In short: try using getResourceAsStream and some constructor of ImageIcon that uses an InputStream as an argument.

Classloaders

Be careful if your app has many classloaders. If you have a simple standalone application (no servers or complex things) you shouldn't worry. I don't think it's the case provided ImageIcon was capable of finding it.

Edit: classpath

getResource is—as mattb says—for loading resources from the classpath (from your .jar or classpath directory). If you are bundling an app it's nice to have altogether, so you could include the icon file inside the jar of your app and obtain it this way.

getClass().getResource(path) loads resources from the classpath, not from a filesystem path.