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JavaFX: Really Challenging

Filed under: javafx on Thursday Oct 29, 2009

Have you see the monthly challenges over at JFXStudio ?

All the entries have to have less than 30 lines or 3000 charcters of code. Last month the theme was Time, this month its the number 5. Numerologically speaking, the number 5 goes hand in hand with sociability, and a tendency to excess. Guess which member of the JavaFX team picked that one ?


And ProJavaFX co-author Jim Weaver has been running a JavaFX challenge of his own.

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Java Store in final stages before open

Filed under: javafx javase javastore on Wednesday Oct 28, 2009

The Java Store team here at Sun is in the final stage of readying things to fling open the doors to shoppers in the next week or so !

This means one more tweak of the store front: just like in a physical store, polishing signage, perfecting the display areas and checkouts: in this case making the final UI changes to the all-JavaFX desktop app that showcases all the Java and JavaFX applications in stock and allows purchase and installation.

And it means final verification of the apps that will be on the shelves of the store on the day it opens - approaching 50 already, as participants in the beta program will already know - with more applications, ranging from free to paid, to come. All coming in at the back of the store, the Java Warehouse, which has been pretty busy of late.

So if you have a Java or JavaFX app that's looking for an audience (like, perhaps the 60-70m that download the JRE each month...), you should stay tuned to the Planetarium. Much more in the coming weeks !

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Launch parties for Java ME SDK for Mac and NetBeans 6.8 ?

Filed under: javafx javame netbeans on Tuesday Oct 27, 2009

Last week was a pretty busy one, with the release of Java ME SDK for Mac (early access), and the NetBeans 6.8 beta.

The Java ME SDK is the all-in-one phone to Blu-Ray app development kit, and the news is that its now available on the Mac platform too. Ready for the final NetBeans 6.8 release on December 1st, whose beta has already had a bunch of promising reviews for the new features, like zapping up the JavaFX code editing  and hinting niceties that Tor has often mentioned.

It's strange no-one suggested doing home launch parties for them. They can be such fun !

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How would you rate JavaFX ?

Filed under: javafx on Friday Oct 02, 2009

Don't bottle up any unexpressed opinions about JavaFX, take the survey.

Mixed in with the usual snoozeville multichoice questions about the kind of project you work on, you get to rate the current feature set and rank the importance of new features the team's working on: tooling, more controls, performance.

When was the last time you did anything anonymous on the internet so quick ?

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New JavaFX User Group

Filed under: javafx on Tuesday Sep 29, 2009

Java User Groups have a long history. As you can see, they have spread all over the world.

Some of them have turned into whole conferences !

And now there's a new (second, third ?)  JavaFX users group, just down the road from the Planetarium.

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Selling applications

Filed under: javafx javastore on Monday Sep 28, 2009

Since the announcement of the Java Store at the last JavaOne, the team has been busy. The warehouse is really taking shape now, and the store front smells of new paint with its final redesign (thanks for the comments). There's a rumor that the cash registers may arrive real soon. And best of all, the shelves are fast filling up with the kind of assortment of games, facebook and twittery map style apps you come to expect from an app store (whether people actually come or not).

Stores are all the rage, because you can find what they you want.

Rather than being told at a creepy party.

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JavaFX Watch....on TV

Filed under: javafx on Wednesday Sep 16, 2009

Continuing in yesterday's vein, there's as much to say about JavaFX.

No doubt you saw the first real step towards JavaFX in your living room, with the announcement from Amino Communications to put JavaFX TV in its range of futuristic egg-shaped TV set-top boxes.

There's also been much talk of the new features in JavaFX 1.2, with a typically thoughtful and useful look at the new layout containers from Swing veteran Amy Fowler (and another tutorial here), and a neat feed reader from Jim Weaver here, and a nice blog on the RSS reader capabilities in JavaFX now here.

Since the UK's Guardian newspaper opened up all its news content to developers, there's a new JavaFX tag cloud navigator, accompanied by an interesting writeup of the creator's experiences with JavaFX and comparisons with Flash.

The JavaFX team pushed out a minor 1.2.1 update of the SDK and runtime, containing a number of bug fixes, new samples and performance improvements. Performance continues to be a strong driver for the next release, as you can see from Really Hip Smart Dude Richard Bair's 100,000 node blog.

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JavaFX Roundup

Filed under: javafx on Friday Aug 28, 2009

From this detailed article about the new mixin feature in the language that replaces the potentially slow multiple inheritence, to a episode three of a continuing series about a new MVC based framework for building form based applications in JavaFX, there's been lots to say about JavaFX in the last week or so.

A couple of new games zoomed into view. As have some deeper reviews of JavaFX technology from those who have actually rolled up their sleeves and used it. Leading perhaps, to a remarkably precient (yet incomplete!) prediction of what is to come in the next version.

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See you at Devoxx 09 ?

Filed under: devoxx javafx jdk7 on Wednesday Aug 26, 2009

The Devoxx conference is something of a shapeshifter. One of the 'european JavaOnes', it grew out of the Belgian JUG, has undergone a number of name changes, and now has shifted up a month, starting this year on November 16th instead of its early December slot.

One thing has remained consistent though: its a well-attended conference with a lot of up to date and high quality technical content.

For anyone interested in JDK 7, or JavaFX you should hop online and get planning: many of the Sun engineers involved in those projects are already signed up to speak.

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JavaFX: Widgets galore

Filed under: javafx on Thursday Aug 20, 2009

If you feel like publicizing your programming prowess and you missed the JavaFX developer challenge, you should take a look at the WidgetFX contest.

WidgetFX is a container for desktop widgets written in JavaFX and is itself written all in JavaFX. And is already filling up with a number of useful widgets. From the obligatory clocks, calendars, post-it notes, to news readers, mailers, bookmark holders and twitter clients.

Or you might just like to put them all on your desktop.

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A question of JavaFX

Filed under: javafx on Monday Aug 17, 2009

Given that JavaFX has already evolved 'from trainwreck to good' in 9 months, isn't it time you made a reservation for a highly recommended JavaFX book or put an online JavaFX learning course on the menu ?

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JavaFX: A Musical Gathering

Filed under: javafx on Wednesday Aug 12, 2009

There's definitely an arc in the adoption of a new technology. From skepticism, to release, the odd stumble, to the evidence of more widespread experimentation, to the first commercial applications.

Indaba Music (from the Zulu indaba:  'gathering') is a collaborative music site, and debuts one of the first commerical applications of JavaFX: the Indaba music console. Currently in alpha, it gives Apple's GarageBand a run for its money, with the ability to lay down multiple music tracks, from prerecorded clips, to those of your own making, to those your friends gave you. Then the fun starts when you start applying musical effects to your composition, and exporting back to your friends.

The Planetarium marks the arrival what is a truly capable and polished online JavaFX media manipulation application, with a special composition which you can download here. (Vocals courtesy of the Janitor).

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Draggable applets: the remix

Filed under: consumerjre java javafx on Tuesday Aug 11, 2009

You almost certainly heard that you can drag an applet out of its web page, so long as the version of Java running it is current enough.

But did you know that you can change the applet as it's being dragged out, or put back in ? That you can change the appearance of the applet according to whether the version of Java running it supports the draggable feature ? That you don't have to have the users hold down the alt key to drag it out ?

If you didn't, check out this tech tip from Javafx.com.

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Stocking the shelves of the Java Store

Filed under: java javafx javastore on Monday Aug 10, 2009

In a physical store, the attractiveness of the shelf display masks what is usually a highly complex set of processes by which the products arrive on the shelves. How optimized these processes are can make or break a store.

Peeking into the backend Warehouse of the Java Store, Bernard Traversant walks you through the process by which Java and JavaFX developers can submit their apps. From attaching all sorts of descriptive information about the application that the store will need (like export licenses, platform version) or that the shelf display will need (description of the application, icons, and, ultimately, the price you set) to the requirement of packaging the application as a single JAR (which NetBeans 6.7.1 handily meets) its all covered here.

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JavaFX and the summer brain drain

Filed under: javafx on Wednesday Aug 05, 2009

Summer holidays ain't what they used to be, especially when parents start fretting about this kind of thing.

Earlier this summer, the Janitor and some of the JavaFX team got together with some of those smart folks over at FreshBrain to sit down and figure out how JavaFX could add to their online summer technology camp for teenagers.

So its great to see FreshBrain's new course on JavaFX: expect to see a wave of New Moon-themed media players in time for the fall term.

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