Get a quick recap of Sun in the news this week in the short segment below as Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert review Amazon's new cloud storage offering based on MySQL open-source software, the 100 million download milestone OpenOffice.org hit this week, the announced availability of Sun investor proxy materials, and the new 3.0.10 maintenance release of VirtualBox.
Software architect Mark Nankman was the winner of the September JFXStudio challenge, which required developers to build an application with 30 or fewer lines of code in a single JavaFX file (30 lines as counted by actual lines, or 3,000 characters), with a 'time' theme. Mark's Pacman clock application took first place and caught the attention of many because of the creativity and complexity demonstrated within the small file. Mark has several years of experience in Java programming, and has recently turned his focus to Web 2.0 and RIA development, which is how he became interested in JavaFX. He said he used to develop Adobe Flex front-ends to interact with Java back-ends, but didn't like the fact that it required 3 programming languages! Turning to JavaFX Mark found that the programming language "makes developing maintainable rich web applications a lot easier."
When discussing Mark's winning Pacman clock application, he noted that it was relatively easy to build, and said he had a functioning product within 30 minutes of starting, stating that with JavaFX "you can do a lot with just a little code." Mark said he needed to use just a few simple manipulations to keep the code within the 30-line limit, such as using compact SVGPaths, along with several other tricks he listed in his blog. Overall, Mark noted that he as "amazed at just how powerful JavaFX is." He reported only having to sacrifice one feature in his application -- the ability to dynamically resize the clock -- which he said simply couldn't be crammed into the 30-line application.
Read more of Mark's interview and listen to a podcast in Reviews Interactive.
Catch up on Sun news this week by listening to the short podcast below in which Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert discuss Sun's top spot in tape storage automation revenue for the first half of 2009, as well as an eWeek article discussing Sun's Solaris Operating System's optimization for Intel Nehalem processors.
Listen to the short segment below to catch up on Sun's product announcements this week including the Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array, new SPARC 64 VII processors, the GlassFish Communications Server 2.0, and the new Sun Storage 6180 Array. As always, the segment is brought to you by hosts Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert.
Student Views and Reviews recently conducted an e-mail interview with Abhishek Munie, a “long-time” user of the JavaFX programming language. Abhishek has been working with JavaFX since the 1.0 release in December 2008. Abhishek reported that he utilized the learning resources and samples available on JavaFX.com to learn the program. He made regular, steady progress in learning the language and was able to develop and submit a complete application for the JavaFX Coding Challenge which he said “was a great experience.”
While Abhishek said he is still exploring the new features in JavaFX 1.2, he reported that his favorite new tools are the javafx.scene.chart and javafx.scene.control. He also said “screen and javafx.util.math class has made my work easy, but I expected more features to be available in class javafx.stage.” When asked what he would like to add to JavaFX right now Abhishek said, “I would like to improve the way a JavaFX application is deployed and run, and make it faster.”
Read more of Abhishek's interview in Student Views and Reviews.
In the short podcast below, Satish Hemachandran and John Clingan talk about the new Sun GlassFish Communications Server 2.0 announced today at Oracle OpenWorld, where Sun will be showcasing demos of both the new GlassFish Communications Server 2.0 and the GlassFish Enterprise Server.
To learn more about GlassFish and the broader portfolio of GlassFish-related products go to sun.com/glassfish, and to learn more about the GlassFish Communications Server 2.0 visit sun.com/sip.
Listen to the segment below to catch up on Sun news this week including Sun's role in the upcoming Oracle OpenWorld, the release of Solaris 10 10/09, and the newly released versions of Sun Role Manager 5.0 software and Sun Directory Server Enterprise Edition 7.0 (brought to you by Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert).
So you've heard the buzz about Oracle OpenWorld and are not sure what to expect at the conference from Sun? Check out the short segment below as Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert talk about the highlights of six of the more than thirty technical sessions Sun is scheduled to host.
For more details on the six sessions discussed in the podcast, check out this PDF. And for all the details on the more than 1,800 technical sessions to choose from, go to the complete content catalog here.
Reviews Interactive recently chatted with JavaFX developer Dean Iverson. Dean has been writing software professionally for more than 15 years and is one of the co-authors of the recently released Pro JavaFX Platform book. Dean reported that he wrote his first lines of JavaFX code at JavaOne in 2007, and wrote his first JavaFX application in the summer of 2008 on the preview SDK. On the preview SDK Dean built a small Web service client for work that he reports “is still in use today.”
When asked what he liked the most about JavaFX, Dean had a lengthy list of favorites to include: the ability to bind to arbitrary expressions, the declarative syntax, the runtime's CSS-like syntax for styling applications, along with the ability to easily interface with Java code. Dean summed it up by saying: “Suffice it to say that JavaFX has a lot of advanced features, and for me personally it does all this in a way that makes sense. It fits my mind like a glove, so to speak.”
Read more of Dean's interview and listen to him talk about JavaFX with Chhandomay Mandal in Reviews Interactive.
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.
