Today I saw a very cool movie created from World of Warcraft scenes.  Check it out.

After ragging on MarsEdit about it's image support, I thought I better try out Ecto image support.

First thing I noticed it that I can drag an image from my filesystem (or even a web page) and drop the image into the editor.  I can also resize the image by clicking and dragging a resize handle.  Very cool.  I can also double click on the image and get a number of options.  For example I can specify that I want this image to be a thumbnail.  That is a nice feature.

I will now try to publish and see what happens.

The fact that Ecto posted my entries with a seemly random publication date, I have decided to continue my search for a good blog authoring tool. Today I am playing with MarEdit. MarsEdit seems to strive to be similar to an email client. The first thing that I notice is that MarsEdit does not have a Rich Text editor. You manipulate the HTML directly. While I like the freedom of modifying the HTML text, I would prefer to have a Rich Text editor.

Now MarEdit does have a combo box that list a number of HTML tags. By using the HTML tags tool, it does make it easy to add HTML tags. My main concern at this time is how to insert images. The HTML tags combo box does have a insert image item. So maybe it will help. Lets try it out.

So far so pretty good. I was able to select a picture and the pictures alignment. When I pressed the Ok button, MarEdit took care of sending the image to the server.

The image is a picture of my four children. The picture was taken the same day that my youngest son was born. August 25, 2006.

MarsEdit has a Preview option (so did Ecto). The Preview window has a live preview option. The live preview option allow you to see the entry in WSYWIG. The question I have is why not put that in the editor? Also after adding the image, I noticed that every keystroke I type in the editor cases the preview window to refresh. Which causes the image to redraw over and over. It was very annoying, so I had to close the window :-( . I have not turned off the live preview, and I notice that the image still flicker when I scroll the preview window. Very annoying.

Well now it the lime to publish.

Publishing Results Well the good thing is that the entry was published and immediately appeared. That is good. However, again the new line characters where not replaced with HTML line break tags. Before editing I thought that I set the option to convert line break to tags. I will try it again.

When I inserted the image, I specified that I did not want the image to have an alignment. I just realized that MarEdit defaulted the image to be left aligned. That is not good. I had to update the HTML by hand.

Well that did not work either. I just gave up and added the paragraph characters myself. All and All I like Ecto better.

One of my hang ups with blogging is a writing the blog.  You have to enter the blog into a text field a web page.  The problem is that you do not get nice editing tools.  Well at least I have not seen any editing tools.  So, I decided to see if there are any good blog editing tools.

I am testing out Ecto.  What is cool about using Ecto (maybe other blog tools as well) is that the entry editing feels like you are writing any other document.

Well this is my first entry using a blog editor.  Pretty cool.

Ok, I learned two things.  First, there is a delay from when you publish and when the entry appears in the blog.  The reason is that a publication time is set for the entry (why I do not know).  Second, you have to use the option edit setting "Convert line breaks in Rich Text mode" to automatically convert newlines to <p> and <br> tags.

Alright I have now updated my client about the time zone information.  Lets see if this works. 

Well that did not work.  Matter a fact, it seem random on when it will decided to actually post the entry. :-(

I have been tagged by Craig, and my goal is to quickly tag 5 others.

1. I grew up hanging wall paper in Dallas. I currently live in Denver, Colorado
2. I have 4 children, two daughters ages 7 and 3, and two sons ages 5 and 4 months. (yes we are now done)
3. I'm a die hard Dallas Cowboy fan.
4. I have worked on the same product what working for three different companies (Advanced Software Technology was bought out by Embarcadero, and then Sun bought the source code for Describe)
5. My hobbies are woodworking (not that I am not very good), and aquariums (I have a small 20 gallon tank).

Now to tag 5 more, Todd, Chris,Karthik, Sherry, and Matt

Today I came across an image of a tatoo. The thing is that the tatoo is the sun logo. This person really likes working at Sun.

As promised I am finally able to provide a flash demo of the new Accessibility features (You will have to press the next button to continue the demo). The demo will demostrates how to create model elements, and navigate a diagram via a keystroke. From what I have seen, we now have the most compliant accessibility support.

Later I will try to have a more in depth demo of model element navigation.

The UML development team has been working to add A11Y features to the UML product. What does this mean to our users. Well the first benefit is that we sill be able to satisfy the A11Y requirements, which is good. But the side effect is that our tool will have a lot of new keyboard access. For example, we have already added keyboard navigation in our diagrams. I plan to create a flash demo of our new navigation features. Stay tune.

Sorry that I have been away for so long. I will try to catch up a little. The UML module has been moved to NetBeans 5.5. Today, the module has finally been moved to the NetBeans 5.5 beta update center. In the this release the reverse engineering module is much faster. In our example applicatoin (which is the UML core module), we have over 3000 java files. We are now able to reverse engineer the module in around 6 minutes. That is a significant improvement over the previous releases.

We also have a new web report. In previous releases of Java Studio Enterprise, the web report was quite awkward to use. The new web report is much more easier. We have choosen to format our reports after JavaDoc.

On a sad note, we hav taken out live round trip. We decided to take out live round trip for a number of reasons. One major reason was because it did not work as well as we liked. Also, we where using the NetBeans Java Model, in NetBeans 6.0 the Java model will be taken out of NetBeans. The Java Editor will not be built on top of the Jackpot project. In the end NetBeans will have a much more robust editor (check out Jan Lahoda's blog about improved coloring, and about improved code completion), but for the UML team it means that we would have to rewrite our live round trip mechanism. Because of these two reasons, we decided that it would be best to take out the round trip component for now. In later releases we plan to put it back into the tool, but it will most likely take the form of a batch round trip instead of a live round trip.

We have also fixed a number of bugs, and worked on a number of usability features. Check out our NetBeans module web page.

Java Studio Enterprise 8 is now in Early Access. Java Studio Enterprise 8 has all of the great features that ship with NetBeans 4.1 and adds Developer Collaboration, Java Enterprise Profiler, and UML modeling. I will highlight some of the new UML features in Java Studio Enterprise 8.

UML Modeling Projects

One of the biggest enhancements to the UML module is a new UML project type. The UML project allows the user to either be in design or code generation mode. The design mode is used to support the Architect. Source code will not be generated while in the design mode. The code generation mode is designed to support developers. When in code generation mode, the source code and model will be sychronized.

UML projects are now embedded in the same Projects view as Java projects. Each UML project has three child nodes. The first node is the Model node. The model node is the root of the model tree. The model node is used to explore the model contents. The contents of the model node are identical to the project tree in Java Studio Enterprise 7.

The second node is the Diagrams node. The diagrams node is a diagram centric view of the model.

The third node is an Imported Elements node. Since multiple UML projects can now be open at the same time, model elements can be referenced between projects. The imported elements node displays all the model elements that are being refenced by a UML model.

Diagram Enhancements

A lot of work went into making the UML diagrams simpler to use. The first improvement is a simpler tool bar. The UML diagram tool bar now contains only tools that are applicable for all diagram types. The diagram specific tools have been moved to a new modeling palette. The palette has categories that are used to group related tool sets. Every palette has a Basic category. The basic category groups tools that are commonly used on the diagram.

Multiple palette categories can be displayed simultaneously. Each palette category can be collapsed to hide tool sets that are not being used. When a palette entry is selected, the tool remains active until the user exits the tool. The active tool is highlighted in the palette. The tool can be exited by pressing the right mouse button, the ESC key, or by toggling the active palette entry.



Source Navigation

Automatic navigation to source editor no longer occurs. A Navigate to Source context menu item has been added to model elements that is associated with a source file. The Navigate to Source context menu is available in the diagram and the project tree.

Diagram Image Export

A new Export To Image toolbar button has been added to the diagram editor. The export to image toolbar button is used to export the diagram to a graphic file. The supported graphic file formats are JPEG, PNG, and SVG.

Property Editor

The UML module now uses the NetBeans standard property editor which gives the UML module a consistent look and feel with Java Studio Entperise. The property editor no longer has multiple levels of properties.

When I think back to the TV show Star Trek The Next Generation, the one think that stands out in my mind is the ease of developing new applications. Wesly Crusher would walk up to a computer terminal, touch the screen and draw connections between a few components and BANG the application was modified. WOW the life of a developer would be so easy if that is all took to write or modify applications.

As tool developers we must all ways ask ourselves several questions. How does this tool make the job of developing software easier? When using the tool, how much time is saved when compared to doing the same work by hand?

The last question is a little harder to answer. Sometimes the time saved is not seen when entering the data, but is seen in future interactions with the tool. For example when writing an application it may not quicker to completely model your entire system, but when you have to make a modification to the system or train new team members the time saved may be seen.

So, how do we measure the how much we help our users?

Since I am new to the blogging ssytem I thought that I would take a momment and introduce my self. I started to work for Sun Microsystems in Aug. 2004. So besides being new to the blogging system I am also fairly new to Sun as was. I work on the Sun Java Studio Enterprise tool as the UML lead. Before starting work at Sun, I worked for Embarcadero Technologies, Inc for four and a half years. While working for Embarcadero I worked on the product Describe, which is UML modeling tool. So, you might have guessed that a my blogs will most likely contain a lot of modeling, design discussions. Well I guess that is about all i have for an introduction. I hope everyone will find my comment enjoyable.