Chet Haase's Blog

July 2007 Archives

Of Interviews, Java, JavaFX, and Other Filthy Things

I did some interviews recently with Ed Ort, from the java.sun.com team, and Kuldip Oberoi, from the SDN Channel. The interview with Ed, cleverly entitled Filthy Rich Clients, covers the book, creating and using filthy rich effects, and Desktop Java in general. There are also some screencasts of various demos from the book that show off some of the filthy rich ideas. The interview with Kuldip, also cleverly called Filthy Rich Clients, is about JavaFX and Java desktop technologies.

Meanwhile, Romain has posted the demos from chapters 12 and 13. These are the demos from the first half of the Animation section in the book. Next week we should see the demos from chapters 14 and 15, which are all about the Timing Framework. Then hopefully the next upload will be everything else, coincidentally timed with the availability of the book itself.

Swing Frameworks: Catch the Wave

I spoke at OSCON in Portland, Oregon this week, talking about JSR 295 (Beans Binding), and JSR 296 (the Swing Application Framework).

"Open Source Convention". Isn't that a bit like "Anarchy Government"? Or "Military Intelligence"? Or "Personable Programmer"?

I've never spoken at an open source conference before. I wasn't sure what the protocol was. Was I just supposed to propose an abstract and then people in the audience would fill in the content? Or maybe I was just supposed to talk with the audience about what the presentation should be like eventually, and then set up a mailing list and a source code repository for the future slides that we might create.

Or we could spend the hour debating the license of the presentation, and some of the audience could walk out in protest.

As it was, I decided to go ahead write and deliver the content. Maybe I can collaborate with the community on version 2.0 of the presentation next time around.

My favorite part of the presentation was the Motivation slide, where I tried to describe why these frameworks are so awesome for Swing developers. But don't developers already find Swing programs easy enough to develop? Isn't Swing development like a day at the beach?

A Day at the Beach

Beans Binding and the Application Framework will make Swing development much easier. From the application-lifecycle capabilities that the Application Framework offers, to Beans Binding's ability to automatically connect an application's GUI with the data that drives it, to seamless integration of these libraries with the IDE in NetBeans 6, Swing developers should have a much easier time of it.

Swing frameworks: Catch the wave.

FXtive Programming

Welcome to the first in hopefully a series of pieces on JavaFX Script. In future posts, I hope to actually do some coding and investigations on my own, but for now, I'm just going to link to the interesting work that others are doing.

In particular, the JavaFX folks now have a first-cut at a compiler for JavaFX Script.  One of the things holding back the language from being ready for prime time is that it was initially interpreted only, which was a bottleneck to good execution performance in general. With the advent of the compiler, now open-sourced and being developed in the community, the language should perform much better and be closer to an environment we could all use for desktop application development. Of course, this will just shift the performance bottleneck elsewhere, which is why a full-on Direct3D-accelerated Java2D pipeline is in the plans for the Consumer JRE release.

There is also a NetBeans plugin that offers enhanced capabilities for editing JavaFX Script programs; a handy thing for anyone doing serious hacking with the language.

Finally, there are always more cool Java FX Script demos, like the Casual IM client. Playing around with the demos is one of the best ways to see how everything works. I would encourage you to check out the JavaFXPad demo in particular; it's an interactive demo that shows the results of your changes as you type them into the code window. The demo is also available in the NetBeans plugin for JavaFX, as of the NetBeans 6 M9 build.

That's it for now. Hopefully I'll get some time soon to dive in and do some hacking with the language and see how filthy I can get.

(For background on JavaFX Script, check out the openjfx project site. There are lots of demos to play with that help describe what the project, language, and concept are all about.)

Final Filthy Content on Safari

The publisher just told me (and I verified, by checking whether the footnotes reflected the latest version of jokes) that the Safari online site now has the final content for our Filthy Rich Clients book. Previously, that site had only the "Rough Cut" version, which was our submitted manuscript that then got copy-edited, formatted, proofed, and generally sanity-checked before they sent it off to the printers a couple of weeks ago.

So if you've been waiting for the final version and either you want an online version or you want the material before the printed version is out (supposedly just a couple more weeks), check out the stuff on the Safari site.

Meanwhile, Romain has been busily posting demos for the chapters every week on an ongoing basis. Yesterday, he posted the demos for Chapter 11, Repaint Manager. Check out the book's website at http://filthyrichclients.org for more info or check out the project site at http://filthyrichclients.dev.java.net to get the demo code.

Sent to Print!

The editor just told us today that Filthy Rich Clients has been sent to the printers. So we're done!

All it took was this last bit of editing of the changes to our edits on the proofs, which were based on our edits to the changes that were made to our edits on the copyedits, which were made to the reformatting of the manuscript that we submitted, which was based on the edits to our edits to our changes based on the reviewer feedback, which was based on our edits to the original chapters.

Man, I can't wait until this thing is actually out. Supposedly, printing takes a month, which seems pretty long to me; entire technology waves can start and die in that timeframe. So Amazon's estimate of mid-August should be about right.

In the meantime, be sure to check out the demos and other info on filthyrichclients.org. Romain has now posted demos through chapter 9. The other half of the book's demos will be posted bit by byte until it's all out there by the time the book is available.

Train Req: Want to Intern at Sun?

The desktop Java group is looking for interns to help us out. Of particular interest are students (at the undergrad or grad level) that have app-level experience and skils in both design and development. For example, an intern could help us out by developing demo applications using some of the new consumer-oriented platform features that we are working on.

Sound like fun? Interested in a job with Sun during a school break or formal internship program? Send us your resume and let's talk.

We're a bit late in the season for getting Summer interns, but we're looking for people immediately if that works for you. Otherwise, if you have a planned internship later this year, we can talk about coming on board then instead (let's call it a "winternship").

We're still filing the formal paperwork for the positions; I'll post links to them here when they're up and you can submit your resumes directly. In the meantime, if you can divine my super-secret email address, feel free to send me a resume which I will duly forward (I just don't feel like posting the address on this public site, much as I like spam...).

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