Skip to main content

Remember

Posted by editor on February 27, 2006 at 7:33 AM EST

Back to the browser

Do you remember the Applet Era? Back in 1.0, before Servlets, or even the Java Web Server, before Swing, back at the beginning of Java, most code was written either as command-line utilities or as applets. For the GUI crowd doing applets, it helped that getting a free ride from the then-popular Netscape browser was providing our potential user-base with a runtime. If only it had gone better -- the move from 1.0 to 1.1 (and its radically overhauled AWT event scheme) was a train-wreck on Netscape, sent out in bits and parts in minor verions of the Netscape browser. Perhaps the worst problem was that the Mac version shipped with a brain-damaged Frankenstein version -- 1.0 for the AWT and 1.1 for everything else, so your code couldn't even look at the version system property to figure out what to do.

The Java plug-in helped solve these problems by standardizing browser access to Sun's JRE. While applets have dropped off the radar for many, they still work and are still supported. In this week's Spotlight, Sun's Ask the Experts page is featuring members of the Java Deployment Team answering questions about Java Plug-In Technology. If you're working on getting your code to run in a browser, Sun staffers Dennis Gu, Danielle Pham, and Mike Lei will be taking your questions all week.

Krishnan Viswanath presents A simple utility in today's Weblogs. "Often, a password is embedded in source as clear text. No corporate risk management folk would approve of exposing passwords, which would potentially expose access to sensitive data. Here is a partial solution that addresses technology by extending the IDE and by using Java 5 Annotations."

Jacob Hookom describes a New Feature for JSF 1.2: "In order to solve some misconceptions with JSF's API and to setup a platform for partial processing (AJAX), we've add a new method to JSF 1.2. For this blog, I'm going to summarize it a bit and provide some ideas for extension."

In Service Oriented Mashups, John Reynolds writes: "What can Service Oriented Architects learn from Mashups? Aren't mashups just about fluffy browser stuff? NetBeans 5.5 may just change that."

In Also in Java Today, by-the-book JMS development means boilerplate code to resolve a JNDI context and manage a JMS session; it takes a lot of work, or a lot of copy-and-pasting, before you're ready to start exchanging messages. The Spring Framework helps do away with this by providing a "template" abstraction that isolates Spring developers from the boilerplate, version differences, and other drudgery. In Asynchronous Messaging Made Easy With Spring JMS, Srini Penchikala provides an overview and examples of how it works.

"Data Access Objects (DAO) is a popular design pattern for building the persistence layer of a J2EE application. Developers use this design pattern primarily to separate their JDBC code from business logic. The EJB3 Java Persistence API, which defines the persistence API for the Java platform based on O-R solutions such as Oracle TopLink and JBoss Hibernate, lets developers skip the mundane task of building DAO and JDBC code." But what if you've already rolled your own DAO? In Migrating JDBC Data Access Objects to Use EJB3, Debu Panda reports that performing this migration on the J2EE Adventure Builder Consumer web site reduced the code size by 16% and the class count by 36%.

In Projects and Communities, the Seneca project is a effort to use open source methodologies for research and analysis. The project is being used to create a paper called "SOA at the Edge". The goal is not to create a "perfect" paper, but to investigate open-source dynamics. The first version of this paper has been uploaded and is available from the project's CVS repository.

Sun has re-released the jini.org projects Surrogate and IP Surrogate under the Apache License, v. 2.0. The various surrogate projects provide a means for devices to participate in a Jini federation even if they are unable to perform certain Jini requirements, such as downloading and executing Java classes on the fly.

In today's Forums, dav0 contributes an analysis and some criticism on Re: why Java3d is not widespread: "Keep in mind that when large companies drop down millions of dollars in the adoption of a new platform, they can't afford to jump ship a year later when Sun decides to start selling Java Server Faces or some new framework. First of all, the chosen framework is seldom used as is, but customized layers are built on top of it to both work around problems, as well as improve upon it. These sorts of application development projects take years to complete and funding for these sorts of rewrite projects is not perpetual."

In Re: Display alert dialog box for all uncaught exceptions, leouser writes: "If you don't have the liberty to develop the mechanism, then study the source of JOptionPane and see how it does its dialogs. Or maybe use a JOptionPane for the notification mechanism instead. Be warned though, if your message is big you will probably need to pass in your own widget to control the sizing of the message. Ive put a patch out for that problem in the Collab project, but I believe things are on hold to see if developing multi-line labels will help solve the problem."

In today's java.net News Headlines :

Registered users can submit news items for the java.net News Page using our news submission form. All submissions go through an editorial review before being posted to the site. You can also subscribe to the java.net News RSS feed.

Current and upcoming Java Events :

Registered users can submit event listings for the java.net Events Page using our events submission form. All submissions go through an editorial review before being posted to the site.

Archives and Subscriptions: This blog is delivered weekdays as the Java Today RSS feed. Also, once this page is no longer featured as the front page of java.net it will be archived along with other past issues in the java.net Archive.



Back to the browser
Blog Links >>