As you may know, we've had a mobile emulator built into the JavaFX SDK since our 1.1 release back in February, but only if you were using Windows as your development platform.  Well, if you are one of the many JavaFX developers that uses a Mac as their primary development machine, we have a couple of solutions for you.

The first option is to get a Windows Mobile-based device and install our JavaFX Mobile runtime.  This runtime has been tested on the HTC Diamond and the LG Incite, but should work on a wide variety of Windows Mobile 6.1 or 6.5 devices.  Once you have the runtime installed, you should be able to build and deploy apps directly to this device from within Netbeans.  If you would like to learn more about how to use this runtime, check out this blog entry by Terrence Barr.

And now, I'm excited to let you know that we've just released an Early Access build of the Java ME SDK for Mac OS X.  With this release, you can build your mobile apps in Netbeans and then run them in an emulator using the Java ME SDK, directly on your desktop!  (Note: we'll integrate this better in the future, but for now you can build your apps in NetBeans and then open them in the Java ME SDK, a relatively simple two step process).  Go download a copy, give it a try, and let us know what you think! 

If you're attending Oracle OpenWorld this week, we'd love you to come by and see what we've been up to!  We've been very busy preparing for this event and are excited to show you everything we've been working on.  First up on the agenda, Sun's SVP for Client Software, Jeet Kaul, will be giving a talk entitled "Relentless Innovation in Java" at 11:30AM on Monday at the Marriott (Salon 4).  He's promised he'll spend about 50% of the time on demos so it should be a fun and engaging session and you may even see a couple of unreleased product previews.  Don't miss out!

The Java team has a number of other sessions they'll be giving throughout the week, and will also be exhibiting at both Moscone South and the Hilton (Oracle Develop).  For more details on these and other activities, please click here. 

Here are some of the interesting blogs and articles about JavaFX published in the last couple of weeks:

• Ten Interesting Aspects of JavaFX Script

• CJTech - JavaFX Production Suite Screencast  and  JavaFX Production Suite 1.2

•  Amy Fowler's Blog - JavaFX1.2: Understanding Bounds

• Martin Matula's Blog - JavaFX Password Field

• Mark Macumber: JavaFX and RSS

• JavaFX Location and GPS

• SW Seminar: JavaFX - Serving the next Billion

• New on SDN: Applying Custom Fonts

• The Java Posse : What do we want from JavaFX

• Also see: Reviews Interactive - here is a list of Recent JavaFX How-To's and Review Articles

Continuing our collaboration with San Jose State University (SJSU), this week we would like to highlight a project developed by Steven Le who is a 4th year under graduate student pursuing BS in Software Engineering at SJSU. This project was developed under the guidance of Dr. Jerry Gao who is a professor at SJSU and was developed in a span of three days. This goes to show that even students with no prior knowledge of the JavaFX language or design experience could pick up JavaFX and create something really simple and usable. The project being highlighted is a typical Calendar Book with ability to flip pages, add pre-loaded icons for various events such as birthday, meeting, dinner etc, and Inline text editing to add a new appointment. 

• Try the Application
• Source Code ( You can download this and build it using NetBeans) 

More about  Steven Le - in his own words :

I'm in my 4th year at SJSU pursuing a BS in Software Engineering. My interests include learning about new technologies, especially in mobile and web development. On the side, I like to mess around with digital design and multimedia type things. Outside of computers, I can enjoy the more active outdoor activities like scuba, water sports, camping, hiking, and sky diving, but most of the time, I'm playing regular sports like basketball and tennis. Basically, I'm just into trying new things.