Edwin Goei's Blog

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Sample Ajax App with JMaki Yahoo AutoComplete Widget

Friday May 04, 2007

In my last post, I talked about getting jMaki components to work in NetBeans from a component developer perspective. However, most IDE users are interested in how to build their own domain-specific app. I've created a demo script that uses a Yahoo YUI autocomplete widget to look words up in a dictionary. You can try it yourself because all the instructions are there, including all necessary downloads such as the latest NetBeans 6 M9 preview release. Alternatively if you have access to the JavaOne pavilion, you can ask for a demo at the NetBeans Visual Web booth. Tell 'em I sent you. :-). As I understand it, a pavilion pass is easier to get, though I don't know the details on how to get one.

Below is a screenshot of the app in the IDE.

Please note that the Yahoo component library is a work in progress and may not be product quality. However, it does show some of what is possible given enough resources.

[6] Comments

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Posted at 07:27PM May 04, 2007 by edwingo in Tools
Tags: ajax jmaki sample

Comments:

I posted a solution on forums.java.net. We use it on humantree.org.

Posted by Matthias Unverzagt on July 22, 2007 at 12:04 AM PDT #

Thanks Matthias. I posted a reply to your post: http://forums.java.net/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=28880&tstart=0

Posted by Edwin Goei on July 22, 2007 at 07:22 AM PDT #

Hi Edwin. I really liked your autocompletion example. Thanks a lot for your work! Are you still personally working on complibs? What would you suggest for a customer, who needs: VWP integration, Bug support or/and source access and license allowance to fix bugs, production quality, works in Tomcat 6? Best regards, Matthias.

Posted by Matthias Unverzagt on May 29, 2008 at 07:17 AM PDT #

I no longer work on NetBeans Visual Web Pack and do not know the status of complibs. I would ask on nbdev@netbeans.org. I'm not a lawyer, but I think all the code involved is open source and can be modified as you need. Writing a rich design-time environment is possible but is also quite difficult. I think these days, most developers do not develop their applications this way.

Posted by 70.231.161.218 on May 29, 2008 at 08:07 AM PDT #

Thank's for your instant reply. ... What do you mean by the last sentence? I do not want to misuse these comments, but I'm really interested. Do you mean JSF with a particular JSF Component library but without Design-Time, or rich strong browser component libraries like YUI or ExtJS with some other binding to the back-end like GWT ... or something else ...

Posted by Matthias Unverzagt on May 29, 2008 at 08:32 AM PDT #

I was referring to the design-time API that is part of what was called "NetBeans Visual Web Pack (VWP)" which is used to create a rich design-time environment. Last I heard, there were a standard set of components that were being supported as part of VWP but I don't know the status. I'd ask on nbdev@netbeans.org. Perhaps developers write plain JSP pages and view the results in a browser, however, I think there is value in using an MVC framework such as JSF.

As to how most people develop webapps, I don't know. I think there are lots of options here including the ones you mention and people often roll their own. I am currently working on a project that only incidentally uses Java in the form of JRuby. The app uses the Ruby on Rails webapp framework.

Posted by 70.231.161.218 on May 31, 2008 at 08:33 AM PDT #