Catch up on breaking Sun news this week in the short segment below as Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert give a wrap-up of the new release of Sun Ops Center 2.5, discuss the updates to Sun Java Communications Suite 7, and talk about the new Sun hybrid supercomputer in South Africa.
Student Views and Reviews recently spoke with Mambo Banda, a 22-year-old software engineering student in his final year at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. Mambo began using JavaFX in September 2008, learning the language in his spare time. He noted that the primary source of information he used in learning JavaFX was the API documentation which he said “is great, it has lots of examples and detailed information.” Mambo said that to this day he still relies on a lot of online blogs to learn JavaFX, such as Jim Weaver's blog, which he noted can have “great JavaFX samples and tips.”
In response to a question asking what he liked most about JavaFX Mambo stated: “I like the whole idea, the whole platform for creating visual applications.” Mambo said he likes the fact that with JavaFX “you can be creative and productive from the moment you pick it up.” Mambo also pointed out that one of the reasons he was drawn to JavaFX was its ability to access Java easily which “allows you to use traditional programming methods without sacrificing anything. Java is a rich language with a lot of years invested in it and you get all that for free in JavaFX.”
Read more of Mambo's interview and listen to him talk about JavaFX with Maijaliisa Burkert in Student Views and Reviews.
Listen to the short segment below as Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert discuss this week's announcement of key technology enhancements across Sun's Unified Storage systems portfolio.
Listen to the short segment below as Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert give a quick rundown of Sun news this week including the Sun and Oracle Exadata Database Machine Version 2 announcement, upcoming Software Freedom Day events this Saturday, September 19, and highlights of Sun's 2009 Corporate Social Responsibility Report.
Catch up on Sun news this week by listening to the short segment below as Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert recap the JavaFX TV platform announcement from Amino Communications as well as the Sun MySQL Enterprise subscription update.
Listen to the short segment below as Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert review what happened at Sun this week.
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Reviews Interactive recently spoke with Jeff “JavaJeff” Friesen, a freelance software developer and educator specializing in Java technology. Jeff teaches Java at a local college and has written several books on Java, as well as numerous articles for java.net and JavaWorld.com. Jeff has an upcoming article on JavaFX 1.2's animated transition classes that is scheduled to be published in September at InformIT.com. Jeff's primary involvement with JavaFX is currently academic, helping developers learn how to best use and extend Sun's JavaFX technology. Much of Jeff's research is presented in articles on his Web site at javajeff.mb.ca. Jeff's most recent JavaFX research projects include the "Painter's Canvas" article, which “provides the means to introduce complex graphics, such as fireworks, into a scene that cannot be (easily) generated via nodes,” as well as the recently published Units Converter application for JavaFX 1.2. Jeff reported he is currently working on some new and interesting JavaFX applications and has written additional articles on various JavaFX 1.2 APIs that will be posted in articles on his Web site later this month. When asked what Jeff liked best about JavaFX he said how the technology “simplifies the development of rich internet applications.” He said “this write-once/run-anywhere capability greatly reduces the learning curve in developing applications for your customers.” Regarding the JavaFX 1.2 release Jeff feels the most helpful new features include added support for NetBeans, and the overall performance increase of JavaFX itself. Looking to the future Jeff said he is eagerly anticipating the 1.3 release to see the new performance upgrades as well as the new APIs. He stated: “I understand that performance will be improved in part by replacing JavaFX's dependence on Java2D with an equivalent technology known as Prism,” but pointed out that it may not happen in time for the 1.3 release. He also said he is really looking forward to working with the JavaFX Authoring tool, stating “I think this tool has the potential to save developers lots of time in laying out their user interfaces,” and also believes the if the tool is successful it “will greatly help to further JavaFX adoption.” To read more of Jeff's interview click here. |
 Jeff Friesen |
Listen to the short segment below as Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert review Sun News this week including the new Sun Cystorm Supercomputer at Iowa State University, the Rainbow Falls announcement at the Hot Chips Conference, and Sun's top spot on the X-Force 2009 Mid-Year Trend and Risk Report.
Jonathan is a relatively new developer in the JavaFX environment, and only recently began working with the program after winning a trip to JavaOne in the “Dude, where's my pass?” contest. Jonathan reported that at JavaOne he was “brainwashed” by members of the JavaFX team when they showed him the work that had been done on controls. He stated: “I was pleasantly surprised and for the first time saw huge potential in JavaFX to be a player in the enterprise software arena, as well as in other areas...such as RIA.”
Read more of Jonathan's interview and listen to him talk JavaFX with Chhandomay Mandal here in Reviews Interactive.
Weekly news recap from Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert is now available. Listen to the short segment below to get caught up on all the big announcements at Sun this week.
Student Views and Reviews recently spoke with Chinmay Garde, a JavaFX developer and student in his final year of study at the Manipal Institute of Technology. Chinmay was the grand prize winner of the Code JavaFX India contest and is very passionate about both RIA and Mobile development. Chinmay stated he has been interested in developing RIAs since the release of the early betas of Flex 3 and Silverlight 2, so he has kept a close eye on the development and progress of JavaFX since the release of the preview SDK last year.
Chinmay called the 1.2 release of JavaFX “a major step forward for the JavaFX platform,” He also noted “the most compelling reason to use JavaFX is the ability to interoperate with existing Java libraries...that do amazing things...simply cannot be beaten.” Chinmay said he is looking forward to the release of the JavaFX Authoring Tool, which he believes “is definitely the most important step in achieving the goal of rich user experiences across devices.” Based on the demos he's seen online, Chinmay thinks the authoring tool “will make the designer-developer workflow more seamless.”
Read more of Chinmay's interview and listen to him talk about JavaFX with Maijaliisa Burkert in Student Views and Reviews.
Kazuki found JavaFX's ability to execute on a variety of platforms to be the most useful feature when developing CalcFX. As a result, Kazuki designed CalcFX be platform independent, making it deployable in desktop, web, and mobile environments. Kazuki especially appreciated this feature, because, as he said, “in Java, you have to use a different way for each environment.” He also noted that JavaFX makes the user interface richer, by providing many filter effects on graphics.
Read more of Kazuki's interview and listen to him talk about JavaFX, and how he used it to build his winning CalcFX application in a podcast in Student Views and Reviews.
In the interview, Evgeni explained how JavaFX made it easy to develop ShiningEtherFX with helpful features for the end user. For example, to make the workplace draggable Evgeni said “it only took five lines of code or therabouts,” saying “implementing that was a dream.” In general, Evgeni noted that JavaFX “makes it easy to take care of a lot of this sort of functionality that users nowadays expect to see everywhere,” noting that just because a user expects something, doesn't mean it is easier to write, and credits JavaFX with anticipating many common use cases.
Read more of Evgeni's interview and listen to him talk about JavaFX, and how he used it to build ShiningEtherFX in a podcast in Reviews Interactive.
Diego stated that the most useful aspect of JavaFX in creating Real Track Car Race was “the simplicity in creating a graphical interface.” He also pointed out how easy it was to make a data mashup with JavaFX, which allowed him to design the application to allow users to select their own race route through Yahoo! maps.
Read more of Diego's interview and listen to him talk about JavaFX, and how he used it to build his winning Real Track Car Race application in a podcast in Student Views and Reviews.
Reviews Interactive recently sat down with Sten Anderson, developer of the grand prize winning JavaFX Coding Challenge application, Music Explorer FX. Sten has been working with Java since the late '90s and is currently a Senior Consultant for the software consultancy, Citytech, in Chicago. Sten began working with JavaFX at the time of the preview release, in August 2008. Sten said he learned JavaFX through trial and error, but claimed “I found it fairly easy to get up to speed in the new language, which is more of a testament to the language design than it is my ability to learn new things.”
Sten found that the most useful aspect of JavaFX in developing Music Explorer FX was “its near-seamless integration with the Java language and platform.” Sten also pointed out that he “would not have been able to write the application in the same time-frame without being able to lean on my existing Java knowledge.” Sten noted that as a Java developer he “found the syntax of JavaFX a welcome respite from the more verbose Java language.”
Read more of Sten's interview and listen to him talk about JavaFX, and how he used it to build Music Explorer FX in a podcast in Reviews Interactive.
