Simon Brown's Blog

August 2003 Archives

Java Rules!

There's been some interesting activity in the Bunkhouse Porch recently. Douglas Dunn has just released the 2nd volume of his Mastering The Fundamentals of the Java Programming Language ... for free! His first book, Java Rules was rated very highly and apparently this is even better.

I said the same thing yesterday about Mac OS X for Java Geeks - this is not your normal Java book. Instead, think of it as a commentary of the Java Language Specification. It basically delves into an amazing amount of detail about various features of the Java programming language by looking at and questioning how things work in the way that they do. For example, it looks at topics such as whether interfaces extend the Object class, and there's a whole section on how exceptions work underneath the covers.

This certainly isn't a book for the fainthearted, but if you’re up against some weird JVM bug or just want to delve deeper into the inner workings without reading the Java spec, then take a look. The 4Mb PDF file is available to download from http://www.javarules.com.

Review of Mac OS X for Java Geeks (O'Reilly)

I've just reviewed this book for the JavaRanch Bunkhouse and thought that I would share it via my blog...

I’ve had a PowerBook for about three months now and I thought that I had Java on Mac OS X figured out. How wrong could I be! First of all, it’s worth pointing out that Mac OS X for Java Geeks by Will Iverson is not your normal Java book. It doesn’t teach you how to use Java, and it doesn’t teach you how to use Mac OS X either. Instead, it takes you on a tour of what’s available for us Java developers on the Mac OS X platform, looking at topics that pull together to make Java development an easier and richer experience.

First up is a look at Apple’s implementation of J2SE and how configuration of the Java environment differs slightly from other platforms. This is certainly something that does confuse most Java on Mac newbies (myself included) and it’s great to see an explanation of how this all works. Next is a discussion of a selection of tools that are useful to Java developers, including all the usual text editors, IDEs, open source projects and even some tools that are bundled with OSX that you might not have found. Again, all very useful stuff, particularly with Mac OS X specific tips thrown in here and there.

Now we get to the interesting stuff by stepping up a gear and looking at the development of desktop applications for Mac. Apple’s JVM includes an implementation of the native Aqua look and feel for Swing, meaning that you can write applications in Java that look native. Here, we’re treated to a fascinating discussion on some of the usability issues and gotchas associated with cross-platform GUI development. With this in mind, the book then goes on to look at some of the Apple specific features and extensions that we can take advantage of in our applications, along with some strategies to help ensure that our Java applications are still cross-platform compatible. This includes integration with things like the Finder and Dock, and we also find out that it is possible to package up Java applications in the same way as native applications, rather than delivering an executable JAR file. After all, one of the key mantras behind Mac OS X is the richness of the user experience.

Moving on, and if that’s not enough, the book delves into some of the Java APIs that Apple provides if you are targeting Mac as your deployment platform, including a look at the Speech, Spelling and QuickTime APIs. The functionality provided by these APIs is amazing, although the actual APIs themselves are incredibly simple. The coverage of the APIs is well balanced. There’s just enough to whet your appetite while still providing a good overview of how to use them.

Finally, the book moves on to look at how to use some of the more mainstream development tools such as MySQL, Tomcat, JBoss and web services. Again, there’s a lot of useful information in here although it’s not as Mac OS X focussed as the rest of the book, instead providing a simple instructional approach to getting something simple coded and running. Sure, there are some Mac specific hints in here, but these sections seem to be aimed at developers who are new to these technologies.

Overall this is a great book, and the use of a simple yet very complete example throughout the book makes it very easy to read and follow exactly what’s going on. My only real criticisms would be that the last few chapters are focussed more on using the technologies (e.g. building your first JSP-based web application) and it might have been good to see a section that talked about J2ME development on OSX, just for completeness. In summary, if you’re an existing Java developer and have recently moved over to the Mac, I strongly recommend this book. I only wish I had found it sooner!

Professional JSP, 3rd Edition (Apress) to be released soon

Well ... it looks like our work on Professional JSP, 3rd Edition (previously titled Professional JSP 2.0, and now to be published by Apress) is almost at an end. It's currently slated for a September release and Amazon is now listing it, albeit with an incorrect authors list. I imagine that Sam, Dave, Matt and the other authors are looking forward to this being released as much as I am.

If you've not seen it, the JSP 2.0 specification provides some great new features that I think will really change the way that JSP-based web applications are developed in the future. Finally we have a native JSP expression language and this makes building templated pages much easier, without leaving the JSP environment. Another big improvement is the introduction of tag files and simple tags. These are both ways to easily build custom tags with JSP syntax or Java code respectively. Here's an early excerpt from one of my chapters back when in the days when it was going to be published by Wrox. There's some great new stuff coming our way and I can't wait for Tomcat 5 to become rolled out and production ready.

Building desktop clients for Mac OS X with Swing

I'm currently reading (and reviewing for JavaRanch) Mac OS X for Java Geeks by Will Iverson and I'm surprised at how good the integration between the core Java platform and Mac OS X really is. Okay, I knew that Apple ships JDK 1.3 and 1.4 along with OSX, but I never realised that you could build a Java application and package it up to look like a regular native app wihout running your code through some native compiler. Instead, Apple provides a way for you to use the same application packaging mechanism as native applications use - you just bundle up all of your classes and resources into a directory and write an XML file to specify the characteristics of that application, much like a deployment descriptor. Once built, you then have a seemingly normal Mac OS X application. In fact, with a little more work on your part, you can even have integration with the Finder and Dock without leaving the Java environment.

With pluggable "look and feel"s available for Mac OS X and now Windows XP, are we now truly going to start seeing the return of the Java desktop client en-masse? If you had asked me a couple of years ago which Swing L&F I preferred, the answer would have been Metal because it looked consistent on all platforms. Although I do like Metal, I think end-users really deserve to be given an application that integrates seamlessly with their native environment. The hard part, of course, is making your desktop applications look and behave the same on your target platforms. I recently blogged about a framework that I developed in the past and perhaps it really is time to dig this out and take it further. Does anybody know of any existing open source frameworks that help you build cross platform Swing applications?

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