JavaFX - We released JavaFX on Dec 4th, a couple of days later than originally scheduled. The launch was preceded by the release of the new JavaFX Script Language Reference and a few blog entries, but the bulk of the posts happened after. Danny has done a couple of nice recaps - check top 10 things and then a very complete News Recap.

After the launch, the team took the show to Devoxx (nee Javopolis); Danny gave one of the keynotes in day one (see his Show Report), and Mark did the same for Day 2 - modularity being key to delivering Java on a multiplicity of platforms, see Mark's notes on the Modular Java Platform and Jigsaw. Danny provided a summary of JavaFX in Devoxx; judged by the whiteboards (caveat emptor and all of that), JavaFX was pretty well received - see the "ultra-cool" section in the Java Cool Wall.

Ah!... And Mr. Jeet now has his Own Blog; welcome to the blogosphere! :-)

VirtualBox 2.1 - The last recap is for VirtualBox 2.1, released on Nov 17th. This is yet another strong release from the VirtualBox team; they are turning releases very quickly (see earlier reports tagged VirtualBox).

Two summaries of the functionality are from Joerg and TheFatBloke. The release includes support for hardware features, improved ease of use and interoperability. It all looks very good, and I really want to host a webinar set at TheAquarium Online on the VirtualBox; the calendar is pretty crowded but we added an extra optional slot per week to cover cases like this.

The VB team records over 8M d/ls of VB - which is very good; if you want to try it out, you can check the latest ChangeLog and then go to the Download page.

JSF 2.0 went into Public Review Draft and Jim has posted more entries in his series showing how to take advantage of the new functionality. In the first one, he describes how to write an AJAX-aware Editable Text Component - sources are here. The second is a SwitchList - sources for an AJAX-aware variant are here (I suspect Jim will write about that version soon).

Arun has written two pieces on how to use the GlassFish v3 Gem with Merb. In the first one he covers the basics while the second Provides a Scaffold for a typical application. The posts have already been used successfully by Ashley Towers, Grant Michaels, iamclovin. Aded - Also check on details on Grant's Experience.

The winners of the Student Contest on MySQL and GlassFish (Official Rules, Announcement) have been announced. They are grouped into two categories, Campus Ambassadors and General Students, with one Grand Prize and several (4/3) Second Prizes on each. The winners are from Brazil (4), India (3), China (1) and the US (1). Full details (and photos) in the Winner Announcement - and thanks to Arun for the tip.

More Translations, this time of the download pages of GlassFish v3 Prelude to 7 languages: German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese - see Ogino's Note;

JavaFX will be launched this Thursday, Dec 4th, but the previews are starting to show. Chris - the original inventor of F3, the precursor to JavaFX - has a Thank-you note, while Robert has published the Reference Manual (thanks to Octavian for the tip). Stay tuned for more news during the launch.

And, in the meantime, on OpenJDK-land, Mark is describing the issues involved in today's Monolithic JDK, which we need to address if we want this infrastructure to be widely available as the basis for efforts like JavaFX.

SpringSource has announced the acquisition of G2One the Groovy and Grails specialist company. Congrats to both! See the reports from The Register and DZone, including comments from Rod on their New Role in the JCP EC. Maybe SpringSource will be able to finish JSR 241? It has been more than 4 years since the EG formed...

Sun has released OpenSSO Enterprise 8.0 (previously FAM, previously Access Federated Manager, previously Access Manager) with full enterprise support. Check out: download, documentation and Java.Net site. Also see Mark's Short Overview, and entries tagged OpenSSO.

And Danny promises that JavaFX will be finally Released on December 2nd. He also points to a nice JavaFX Overview at InfoQ and to the current RC download. More info as we get closer to the launch.

From Chris a report on the performance improvements of JavaFX: where JavaFX is close to Java in performance. Big improvements since this Earlier Post. I know the JavaFX compiler team (Robert, Per, Brian) and they are all top notch.

From Leo Soto, the Django Framework now runs on Jython. See Leo's blog entry and the Wiki page for details... and How to Run it on GlassFish. One more scripting language and framework! Jython is moving much faster than I had anticipated; Frank is already Working on Jython 2.5.

Arun points out that Rails 2.2 is going to be multi-threaded. That's very good, specially in the context of a JRuby implementation - no need to do magical pooling of instances and the such!

And, talking about Arun, his latest TOTD entry (#42!) is a Hello World using JSF. Good to see Arun helping there; the JSF 2.0 spec includes a lot of interesting new features and we are going to need help to provide examples on how to use them!

Sebastien writes about how to his OpenESB application uses the OpenOffice Java API to Include MS Office Conversion in his application.

Judy reports that there are now 30 FishCAT members around the world that will help improve the quality of the GlassFIsh Server. All of them are non-Sun employees; I count 16 countries at the Quality Portal Home Page.

The JavaFX team provides an introduction to the Project Nile, which provides a mechanism to incorporate Adobe graphical assets into JavaFX; check out the Screencast by Jeff Hoffman and the Tutorial Document.

The Tutorial Divas have been updating their Ruby tutorials to the forthcoming NetBeans 6.5 release that includes GlassFish v3 Prelude. They have comments on the key tutorials: Setup, Getting Started and Ruby Weblog in 10 Minutes. Check their Getting Started with NetBeans Ruby 6.5.

Ryan continues his series on JSF 2.0 new features with a Practical Example of the JSF 2.0 Event System. Ryan's previous 7 entries cover all the main features in JSF 2.0 (including the Event system) and are collected in This TA Spotlight.

Back in March, Yamini wrote an entry on how to use the CallFlow Monitoring in SailFin and now has a followup with an FAQ on CallFlow. Expect more coverage on SailFin as the product moves towards its final release at the end of the year.

From Roberto, a new Enterprise Tech Tip on Building An Ajax-Enabled Web Application Using Phobos and jMaki.

From the JavaFX team, an invitation to participate next week in an Ask-the-Experts session. This is a Q&A format via email, with replies summarized and available for later use. Check Rita's Note, or go directly to the Ask the Experts website.

From Steve a screencast of a Live xVM Server Demo.

And, for something different, from The New York Times, a report on two very large Solar Farms in California. One step at a time...

From the OpenJDK Porting List, two new approved projects: BSD Port and Zero-Assembler project which dispenses with the need of an assembler to improve portability.

Two initial evaluations of the JavaFX SDK Preview. From the InfoWorld Test Center: Via Chhandomay and Java Developers Journal, via JavaFX Blog. Both are positive reviews; let's hope the momentum continues and grows.

From Wonderblog, reports of VEGA using Wonderland in a Virtual Academy. As a recap, wonderland (part of Looking Glass) is a toolkit for creating collaborative 3D virtual worlds; the standard server-side for it is the wonderland server, which is based on DarkStar, although other back-ends are possible (like the GlassFish-based Underworld project).