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Dragging applets out of the browser window

Surely one of the most memorable moments of JavaOne 2008 was seeing that with the new Java plug-in, an applet can be dragged out of a web page to exist as its own independent window, optionally becoming a desktop application. Swampcast's Michael Levin wrote, "this reminds me of widgets and gadgets. It's yet another move in a web-centric direction", while Charles Ditzel added "This is one of the most compelling desktop technologies demonstrated - the battle between browser and desktop app is resolved - and the winner is both."

So now that everyone's home (or never left, but downloaded the latest Java SE 6 Update 10 build after seeing the JavaOne keynote), it's time to try it out on your own machine and see for yourself how it works.

And the people who are playing with the new applet support are talking about it in today's Forums. In Sessions and draggable applets, jimaltio writes "I've been experimenting with the new draggable applet functionality and I have it mostly working, but have a few questions about what happens when you close down the browser while the applet is running outside it. As far as I can tell, when you drag the applet out of the browser it is still an applet and still uses the browsers' session information - however once the browser is closed it seems to turn into a Java Webstart application, which makes sense, but what happens to the session information? For our applet we lose the session information once the browser is closed and so our client-server communication fails."

Meanwhile, ktcoxn is checking out Inter-Applet Communication with 6u10. "I am currently working through an inter-applet communication issue. I would like ideally to have some sort of way for an arbitrary number of applets on a page to communicate through listeners. In earlier versions of the Java plugin there were no really nice ways to do this (and believe me, my teammates and I have gone through several different ideas). In 6u10 it looks as if the situation may be getting worse, with the potential for multiple JVMs for different applets. Other than RMI, are there any ways that inter-applet communication may be done both before and after 6u10?"

Elsewhere in the desktop Java world, kcr has posted JavaOne 2008 BOF slides to the Java 3D forum. "At JavaOne 2008 we hosted a "3-D Graphics APIs for the Java and JavaFX Platforms" BOF. The slides are linked from the java3d home page. The direct URL is: https://java3d.dev.java.net/j3dbof08/index.html. We will keep you updated on plans for our new scene graph. Specifically, we will update you on our open source strategy as soon as we have something to share. Also, we hope to make an early access release available in the not-too-distant future. Our hope is that the new scene graph will meet the needs of many Java 3D users."

In Java Today, Mark Reinhold announces more distribution success for OpenJDK in the blog OpenJDK in Fedora 9. "Fedora 9 (Sulphur) was released earlier today, complete with a set of OpenJDK 6 packages. Dead-simple installation instructions can be found here. As an added bonus these packages have also been contributed into the EPEL project, a community-run effort to make Fedora packages available to users of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, CentOS 5, and other RHEL 5 derivatives."

It's time to elect the new NetBeans Governance Board. The nomination period is open from May 13-26 and the voting will take place from May 27-June 9. The new governance board members will be announced to the community on June 11, 2008. Further information is available from the NetBeans Board Elections page.

Over the last couple of years, we have seen ever more advanced games for mobile devices. 3D graphics are no longer something you can only experience on the cutting edge devices, but are available on many mid-range mobile phones. In the SDN article New gaming experiences with OpenGL ES and the Mobile Sensor API, Erik Hellman describes a very simple game for a Sony Ericsson w910i that uses both the OpenGL ES API for Java ME and the Mobile Sensor API.

JavaOne recaps and memories linger in today's Weblogs, beginning with Arun Gupta's JavaOne 2008 Wrapup. "JavaOne 2008 is finally over ... 9th consecutive one for me and extremely busy as always! John talked about GlassFish related announcements. Some important names/renames/announcements..."

Christian Frei talks about one of the buzz-worthiest languages from last week in From Java to Scala? "In many sessions at JavaOne Scala was a topic of interest. In the Java Posse BOF the question even the question was raised if Scale could replace Java."

Finally, video blogger Rachel Hill is working through all the footage she shot at JavaOne and has a new video on Rich Internet Applications. "Panel Discussion on Rich Internet Applications at the RedMonk Unconference at CommunityOne."

Current and upcoming Java Events :

• May 12-15 - Java Power Tools Bootcamp
• May 16-18 - Greater Atlanta Software Symposium 2008
• May 16-18 - Greater Oklahoma Software Symposium
• May 19-23 - Daring Java Conference: Java to Celebrate Its 13th Birthday at Bangalore
• May 19-23 - Great Indian Developer Summit 2008 Features Co-located Conferences on Java, Rich Web and .NET
• May 19-23 - J2EE Training Philippines
• June 6-8 - Lone Star Software Symposium 2008: Dallas Edition
• June 18-20 - TheServerSide Java Symposium-Europe
• June 20-22 - Research Triangle Software Symposium 2008
• June 23-26 - Jazoon'08

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.

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