The Planetarium

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 !

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.

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.