Chet Haase's Blog

March 2007 Archives

Obligatory Amazon link

We finished writing the book in January.

We finished editing and rewriting it in February.

We submitted the final (pre-formatted-and-copy-edited) content to the publisher weeks ago.

Yet still, it feels like the book wasn't real until it showed up on Amazon. Here's the draft of the cover:

Note the "July 2007" release date. Note also that the final Harry Potter book is also due to be released in July. Mere coincidence? Perhaps Ms. Rowling is just trying to catch the wake of our immense marketing plans and blinding success in the consumer reader space. I expect bundling deals on Amazon are in the works ("Buy Harry Potter with Filthy Rich Clients today for the low price of ...", "Be a Swing wizard!", ...).

We're hoping to have something releasable in time for JavaOne, but it looks like it might be a "rough cut" (beta version, download for purchase) and possibly a beta book version at the show. But in any case, the real thing should be widely available by July (due to contract stipulations with Ms. Rowling's publisher over co-bundling deals, for one thing).

JavaPolis "Filthy Rich Clients" video posted

The JavaPolis conference was excellent in its own right, but one of the coolest things about it is that they post the videos of the presentations after the fact. So not only can you see the slides, but you can also hear our jokes fail in real-time. Watching these presentations makes it feel like you're almost there, except for the lack of french fries and mayo. And beer.

They posted the video of our "Filthy Rich Clients" presentation on the parleys.com site yesterday. So grab some fries, spoon some mayonnaise, pour yourself a beer, and tune in to this animated discussion.

Desktop [Really] Matters

Thanks to Ben Galbraith for organizing a great conference on Desktop Java. It was wonderful to gather a group of people focused on desktop stuff. We heard sessions on frameworks and approaches that other people are taking with the platform and had great opportunities to tell people where we're trying to take Swing, and to get feedback on where the community would like us to take it.

It's always nice to meet people that you know from your virtual life online, such as Kirill and Eitan. I look forward to working with these folks more in the future, as well as seeing them at future conferences.

I won't do an overview here, but there are other java.net blogs that hit some of the highlights, such as Ben's, Eitan's, and Kirill's, so you might read those blogs as well. In case you're curious about the animation stuff that I discussed (unfortunately without Romain, who was unable to work out visa/passport issues in time), I'm posting the PDFs of my talk on the Timing Framework as well Romain's presentation on Filthy Rich Clients.

I'll also be doing a presentation (on behalf of Romain, still stuck in line at the US Consulate, waiting for a visa) on Filthy Rich Clients at the ServerSide Java Symposium (who knew?), and Romain and I will be doing another version at JavaOne this year (Filthy Rich Clients: Talk Dirty to Me), in addition to a Filthy Rich Clients JavaU course that will go longer and deeper.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.