Thoughts at 05:05:05 on 05/05/05

PDoubleya posted a simple suggestion to my blog yesterday on Client apps.

People don't "play" with Java because they have no playground. It's too much work to get little Java apps off the ground, they launch too slowly, everything is meant for a slow-paced design cycle. You want the excitement behind HTML/JS, Dashboard, VB, Hypercard--the enthusiasm that made people just pump out little apps all the time--make it easy for them to get involved.

Such a nice and simple idea. If you want people to play, build a playground. My point was that you should also have toys scattered about (which we do with the APIs) and have other kids on the playground clearly having fun (killer demo apps). It seems that Java may be taking some steps in the direction of thinking in terms of these "play time" components.

In Also in Java Today , Frank Sommers talks about how some of the design elements from working with Visual Basic are now coming to Java in Java Rockets Closer to VB-like Ease with JSR 273. One difference in approach is that "in the Java world, the solutions are focused on class libraries, not component libraries. .NET developers, on the other hand, think of solving problems in terms of components, rather than class libraries and configuration files." There is an effort " to push the Java platform more towards components. That requires a bit of technical work because component-centered thinking requires excellent component support in IDEs. Components would have to be configured at design time in a much more sophisticated way than what is currently possible with JavaBeans, says Nuxoll. Hence the need to extend JavaBeans to include design-time functionality that component authors can leverage in visual environments to make components easier to use."

For those of us still in the class side of the world, there is a new (not so) stupid question feature on packaging up classes. How do you decide how your classes should be organized into packages and subpackages?

Craig McClanahan has posted JavaServer Faces Integration -- Proposed Requirements and Approach on the Springframework-developer mailing list. He proposes creating a "high quality integration of Spring WebFlow with JavaServer Faces" and provides a roadmap based on his experience with Shale, a Java-based web application framework "designed *assuming* that JavaServer Faces front controller facilities will be used, rather than treating JSF as just a view tier technology (where there are integrations with many web frameworks already, including Spring MVC and Struts 1.x)." He presents the requirements for SWF and JSF integration along with a proposed implementation approach.

Steve Mallet invites you into a new Java conversation in his blog about JARBUCKS.org in today's Weblogs. His goal is to provide "An easy way to track the collective consciousness of the Java community."

Eitan Suez pauses once in a while to enjoy what he is able to do. He blogs about 'grazie signore' moments when you code. "Every day we code. The going [for me] can be slow but things do move forward and progress. Every so often I pause and admire a new feature I've added to a system I'm working on and get a terrific feeling of satisfaction."

Simon Brown wants to know Why aren't all J2SE 5.0 updates going to make it onto the java.com website? Having read Graham Hamilton's blog entry several times he reports that he still doesn't "understand why you wouldn't want to push out minor updates via the consumer java.com website. The end result of this is that J2SE 5.0 Update 2 is available from java.com, while Update 3 is available from the java.sun.com website."

In Projects and Communities, Ray Gans, Peter Kessler, and Kelly O'Hair recently answered questions in an Online chat about Project Peabody, "an initiative to provide a more collaborative development environment for future generations of the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE)."

The Java XML & WS community has graduated the Argos project, an interface to internet search engines, and smallx, an XML Infoset & Pipelining Technology. They have also added SilkPage, XMLDiff, and stax2dom to the incubator.

In today's Forums, gregorypierce continues the thread on What future for Java on OS X. "I don't need the whole of Java updated lockstep on OSX, but for the love of God DO NOT release another J2ME SDK that doesn't run natively on OS X!"

Grlea posts on the Direction of JavaSound in Mustang. "I recommend joining the javasound mailing list. It's pretty low traffic but there's a lot of knowledgable people subscribed, (including Florian, who worked on JavaSound at Sun for a few years, and Matthias, who wrote the Tritonus implementation with Florian) and any sensible question will usually get a couple of helpful replies within 24 hours."

BBisset answers a question on the JAX-RPC2 and SOAPAction HTTP header. "The stub property was hard-coded in a few places rather than relying on BindingProvider.SOAPACTION_URI_PROPERTY. Also, it seemed to be using two different values in some places, so the generated code is also in error. This will be fixed in the next release. In the meantime, there is a workaround that you can use. After getting your stub, set the property with the following property name and it will be picked up and added to the SOAPAction header: myStub._setProperty("http.soap.action", "http://example.service.com/theaction"); "

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