Beckham's Blog: a weblog by Tony Beckham

I can't believe NetBeans has reached the 10 year mark.  It has happened so fast.  I remember what was just like yesterday celebrating Java's 10th.  Now here we are celebrating the best IDE on the planet.  built on Java so it runs everywhere and yet it supports so many languages.  Did I forget to mention it is easier than ever to build on top of the NetBeans platform!

The last few years have been amazing.  Currently NetBeans supports developement for: Groovy and Grails, Java, Java EE, Java ME, SOA, PHP, Ruby and Ruby on Rails, AJAX,  C/C++, and in the works Python.  And the database support is amazing with MySQL, Postgres, JavaDB...and the runtimes: Glassfish, webrick, jetty, mongel, tomcat...they all just work out of the box!

I'm glad to have had a part in the success of NetBeans and am proud to share my joy with the world.  Don't forget, NetBeans 6.5 RC1 is available for download now so go get it and check it out.  Happy Birthday NetBeans.

I don't know why I haven't mentioned this before, but, I have recently been involved with the JavaFX project here at Sun. It all started at JavaOne when I was afforded the opportunity to support the JavaFX project. Since then, I have been helping to ensure quality of the NetBeans plugins as well as quality of the repository. JavaFX is a family of products: JavaFX Script and JavaFX Mobile. JavaFX Script is a a highly productive scripting language for content developers to create rich media and content for deployment on Java technology. JavaFX Mobile is a complete mobile operating and application environment built around Java and Linux open source technologies. More information on JavaFX Script is available at www.sun.com/javafx. JavaFX script is built using Java and can use any existing Java libraries such as Java 2D and Swing but it makes it much easier to use these libraries. Check out the samples available on the JavaFX site and start contributing today. It is an open project from inception so I'm sure progress and innovation will move quickly.

Technorati Tags: NetBeans, javafx, scripting

Ubuntu and Solaris dual boot[Read More]

Hello all, Last spring I wrote a sample application demonstrating how easy and cool it is to use the GoogleSearch web service that comes bundled with Creator. Well, I'm happy to announce that a complete writeup I did on the application as well as links to download are currently featured on the Creator homepage. This was all made possible with help from Creator Content lead Carla King and my sample applications lead and tech writing guru, Jim Bisso. I encourage anyone who hasn't checked out Creator yet to do it now. We ahve sample applications to demonanstrate almost anything you would want to do as well as have great forum participation. Enjoy. -Tony

Creator in the Classroom[Read More]

As of late, I've been telling everyone about Sun Java Studio Creator 2. What I have failed to mention are some of the people that have made it all happen. If you are part of the Rave Team please don't feel offended by your initial exclusion, Peter Z., 008, Sandip (I mean Plug In ), etc. One of our super engineers I want to recognize is Marco :) . My towel wearing, OS and server master friend Marco has apperently challenged the world to determine his hometown (somewhere in Germany as far as I can tell) ;) Even though he is a colleague I have no idea where this is. Please help me find out Where Marco's from. Happy Hunting, and don't forget to let me know!
-Tony

I have been seeing a bunch of questions about Sun Java Studio Creator 2 floating around and would like to share an amazing bit of knowledge...If you have downloaded SJSC2 (thus you have an SDN account) there is a Creator forum for any question you may have. And chances are, someone else has already asked and there are several responses from our crack engineering and QA teams. Click here to visit the forum now.

So you've installed Creator 2.0 and you want to create awesome apps that use AJAX. Well, have no fear, there are components for text completion as well as sample applications for a dictionary service at your disposal. Once you have installed the IDE choose samples from the web and select AJAX sample. This tutorial will help you get started using AJAX components with Creator 2.0! Also, if you are really into AJAX visit the Sun Developer Network site: http://developers.sun.com/channel and start developing sweet web apps using AJAX today!

After months of hard work from the Rave Team, Creator 2 is here today! There have been significant improvements to memory usage, portlet projects, and way too many new components to mention. Get your copy today and start developing amazing web apps with an ease never before imagined. And Don't forget to check out the sample applications built into the IDE (A personal plug since I wrote two of them ;) ).

So here we are. A time after before. I really want to spread some cool podcasts I've come across lately as well as some blogs. Back when I was attending school in Santa Barbara I was a fan of the show "The Screen Savers". Basically a low level tech show for anyone who wants to be somewhat up on current technology. They had many qualified hosts but my favorites (for many reasons) were Patrick Norton and later Kevin Rose. I have just come across a podcast that is basically "The Screen Savers" as podcasts. Check out the podcasts "This Week in Tech" and "Diggnation". The latter is Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht discussing the tech of today a la Waynes World(from the couch). The blog digg.com and dvorak.org/blog/. digg.com is very similar to slashdot but instead of the editor choosing what is on the home page, the visitors to the page vote for the articles they want on the home page. A very community oriented approach.