I’ve frequently browsed Erik Thauvin’s Linkblog since he does an excellent job of trawling the net and picking out the most interesting and relevant Java and technology news items (and I’ve even had a couple of my own posts linked there). Sad to say that Erik has decided to end the blog… that’s a big loss for the community to lose such a good news resource…
JBoss App Server 4.2 released – includes key Java EE 5 features
JBoss AS 4.2 was released on May 11 this month and includes many key features from Java EE 5, such as EJB3.0, JSP 2.1 and Servlet 2.5.
JBoss AS 5.0 will be the complete EE 5 implementation, but 4.2 has been made available to get these features out now, rather than waiting for 5.0 to be completed.
Putting JavaFX in Perspective
Now that JavaOne 2007 has come and gone, we’ve time to reflect and digest the wealth of information condensed into one week. The main announcement that grabbed everyone’s attention was JavaFX, the new addition to the Java platform to ease and simplify development of compelling user interfaces for users (meaning not ‘developers’).
During the week there were numerous comparisons to Flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight, a browser plugin to enable creation and delivery of .NET based rich internet applications, however this blog post puts JavaFX into perspective. Without the equivalent of Macromedia’s Flash Professional currently there is no time based UI and animation creation tool for JavaFX. Editing and syntax highlighting support was mentioned as an add-on for Netbeans, this is no competitor to Flash Professional’s content creation support. Also, without further details it is assumed that to run JavaFX you will need a Java Runtime Environment on your machine – this is a significant download compared to the lightweight Flash Player plugin for most browsers.
JavaFX holds a lot of promise, but there is definitely room for the concept to grow if it is to complete in the same area as Flash.
Building the OpenJDK with Netbeans
Sun annouced the completion of their initiative to Open Source Java this week at JavaOne – the majority of the JDK is now available as open source and you can download and build the javac compiler and the JDK APIs.
If you are looking to get stuck in with the source, head over to their project website. For instructions on how to build the source with Netbeans, take a look at this article on the Netbeans blog.