Carried from the field
Can you train for unsustainable pace?

Connecting Disparate Dots
Get your EJB's testable

Rant: Rich web applications

I haven't done a good bile type rant in a while so here goes...Am I the only person that thinks the current browser is a stop gap at best in terms of a base level for application development. I'll admit from a business perspective I can see why we have all these browser based applications. 99% of everyone has access to IE or Firefox. The application runs on the server and doesn't "install"anything reducing deployment costs. In theory that is all good. However, what will it take in the industry to move further?

This rant started today by reading Kevin's blog post on Rich web applications (Kevin's comments have nothing to do with the rant, the concept just set me off). He links to another post about the guys at Oddpost. Apparently they have floated around a number of places writing cool DHTML/Javascript components. From a user perspective applications like Oddpost and Gmail are indeed cool. However, it feels trying to turn a bicycle into and tank. One was not meant to be the other originally.

I'm not ranting to advocate Java is the end all be all solution to this problem. I think it is evolving into an option. There are other technologies floating around like Flex and Laszlo. It just seems to me that the W3C, Microsoft, Sun, Mozilla, and others should be taking a look at the successes and limitations of today's browser based world and "refactoring"things into a better platform for tomorrow development needs.Rich web applications

What's Your i-Name?
Catching up on where the early seeds of the grass-roots identity movement have taken hold.

[ 22 Dec ][ News ]: J2ME MIDP Visual Editor: New Features in Mobility
New FeaturesVisual Design Editor - Visually lay out your MIDlet's workflow, and design and code the GUI using drag and drop elements. (Note: To start the Visual Designer, choose File >New File >MIDP >MIDP Visual Design.)Improved configuration support - User-defined Abilities allow greater flexibility when creating configuration specific code blocks. Also, you can now use project templates to create a configuration once and use it in multiple projects. Improved obfuscation configuration - Now you have greater control over your obfuscation settings. Improved user attributes support - Create custom attributes and choose their location, whether in your JAD file, JAR manifest file, or both files.Download it from http://www.netbeans.info/downloads/download.php?a=n&p=1 together with latest NetBeans IDE 4.1 Q-Build, choose 4.1 Q-Build next to Choose Build type.

XUI 1.0.4 released

XUI 1.0.4 released
XUI is an open source Java and XML framework for building rich client, desktop and mobile applications. The framework can save you up to 60% of the code typically needed to build an application. The result is real savings in development time, maintenance costs and provides greater stability and flexibility.

SAP announces J2EE support with NetWeaver
SAP and Java together? This month SAP made the big announcement, that the NetWeaver technology platform will now offer support for the Java 2 Platform intrigued we waanted to know more.

Producing Enterprise Architecture:
A Conversation with Sun's Dan Hushon, Part Two In the final part of a two-part interview, Sun Microsystems' Dan Hushon talks about adaptive enterprise architectures, the market for developers, Java Centers of Excellence, and loosely coupled components.

ClientJava.com Links(6) - Java Graphing, JGoodies, Screenshots with Ja
Ole Jose, and swingworkers
I've been reviewing SwingWorkers lately. Too ugly for my liking. Somewhat difficult to use. I've been learning/playing with the new concurrent utilities in JDK 5.0. Oh, my, we needed those!

There are some real possibilities with the JGoodies stuff
It's not often I get excited about a library, but every once in a while there is something that comes along that so fits my current set of needs right now that I really like it. Swing based GUIs are notoriously verbose, the layouts are buggy, and generally make life difficult for you. Then comes along this form layout library that works with Swing instead of against it...

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