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    Subversion Support in NetBeans 5.5

    December 18th, 2006

    I've been so busy with NetBeans 6.0 work that I haven't commented at all on NetBeans 5.5. We just went final about a month ago and had a big party in Prague. 5.5 is a big release, though most of the work is under the hood or on the server side and being a client side developer it doesn't affect me much.. The new Visual Web Pack is pretty nice though. There is one feature, however, that I am really excited about and that I use every day. Subversion support. With NetBeans 5.5 you can download Subversion support through the Module Update center, and it will be built in to NetBeans 6.0. So let's dive in. What is Subversion anyway?

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    Tagged: java.net

    Free Projects Part 3: SketchPad

    December 4th, 2006

    Last week's project

    So far the response to my free projects has been positive. There was a question about why I put the strange requirement of having to create a project to get the code. The simple reason is because I thought it was funny. I have no way to enforce that anyone does anything with the code. As with all of my open source work, I simply hope that something useful comes out of the effort I put in. So if you like the code just drop me an email saying so. That's really all. And with that, here is the code to the stacked editor.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Free Projects Part 2: the Stacked Image Editor

    November 27th, 2006

    The Stacked Image Editor

    The Stacked Image Editor is a little program I wrote and posted on my blog a year and a half ago. It is used to draw a certain kind of diagram very easily. In this case, I had a need to show something composed of layers, with each layer broken out visually so you could see how they stacked. I was learning more about how the hardware accelerated affine transforms worked at the time so it seemed like a good example app. You just add images as layers. The app will draw them sheared on an angle with transparency so you can see each layer distinctly. Once you've tweaked all of the settings you can save the whole thing out to an image.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Free Projects Part 1: a Screen Capture Uploader

    November 20th, 2006

    Screen Capture Uploader

    The Screen Capture Uploader, released under the ominous name of Big Brother, is a simple program that runs on your desktop taking screenshots every few seconds, then uploading them to a server. The server then allows you to embed the screenshot, or a thumbnail, in your homepage.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Posting from 30k ft: Cool Projects, Free to a Good Home!

    November 17th, 2006

    Posting from 30k feet over north eastern Canada

    Yes, I'm flying back from Prague today and we have wifi here on the Lufthansa aircraft. It's both expensive and power draining but amazingly it actually works. I don't know if should call it the coolest thing ever or scream because they have now taken away the only completely network free time left to us. sigh The march of technology, I guess. At least until the battery runs out.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Musings on the new opportunities that Open Source Java brings

    November 12th, 2006

    I have often said that I don't love Java because I'm at Sun. I'm at Sun because I love Java. I love Java so much that I wanted to work at a place where I can do the most good for the Java community, and Sun is definitely that place. Now that Java is open source I think it means only good things.

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    Tagged: java.net

    A nice Java evening with sour cherry beer

    November 12th, 2006

    After a several hour trek through Prague Castle and the Cathedral I arrived back at my hotel with around 400 photographs. It's going to take a while to go through them but here are some highlights.

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    Tagged: java.net

    My first two weeks at Netbeans

    November 9th, 2006

    Greetings from Prague. I've been at Netbeans for about two weeks now and it's been quite a busy time. I think I'm really going to like it here. Everyone is very friendly, the city is beautiful, and they have excellent and cheap beer (cheaper than soda!). I know you are all busy, so for the speed readers in the group I've bolded the important bits.

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    Tagged: java.net

    A quick intro to HttpClient

    November 1st, 2006

    The following is a techtip I wrote which wasn't used. Since I turned out pretty well I thought I'd post it here. Let me know what you think. Would you like more of these small self-contained tips?

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    Tagged: java.net

    Java people in Prague

    October 28th, 2006

    If there is any other Java people living in the Prague area who would like to go out for dinner, drinks, or do some general site seeing then just let me know. I'm going to be here for three more weeks and I don't know anyone yet. I'm reading through my Rough Guide book and it looks like there's lots of cool things to see here.

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    Tagged: java.net

    I'm getting married, leaving the Swing Team, and flying to Prague

    October 26th, 2006

    It's true. I'm leaving the Swing team. But don't worry, I'm not leaving Sun. I'm joining the Netbeans team, flying to Prague, moving to Oregon; oh, and I'm getting married!

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    Tagged: java.net

    Update on Bug 6477341,the '...' Windows Combobox bug.

    October 18th, 2006

    Thanks to the hard work of several teams inside Sun (the development, testing, integration, and approval teams) combined with the persistence of the outside Java community, I am happy to say that the bug 6477341 will be fixed. More importantly it will be fixed in Java 6 final, not in an update release. The fix was just integrated into b103, which should be going up soon.

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    Tagged: java.net

    NASA Maps in your Swing App

    October 12th, 2006

    Short short version:

    map_not_awesome.png Not Awesome

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    Tagged: java.net

    GIF will finally be free!

    September 29th, 2006

    I just read this. The last patent on the GIF format will expire on Sunday (October 1st, 2006). At long last the GIF format will be free. Of course we should all be using PNGs for everything, but thanks to lackluster IE support that's not always possible.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Introducing Painters II: filters, shapes, and the builder

    September 26th, 2006

    Introduction

    Welcome back. Last week I introduced a cool new technology we've been working on in SwingLabs, Painters, and described how they work. If you missed the first blog you should go read it now. Don't worry. We'll wait.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Vista getting better

    September 25th, 2006

    I don't usually blog on non-Java topics here, but I thought I'd make a mention of how Windows Vista is improving.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Introducing Painters

    September 20th, 2006

    One of the temptations of design is to not show your work until it's ready. Not until every edge is smoothed and every bolt is tightened should anyone be allowed to see it. While this might be okay for paintings or sculpture, in the world of software it often leads to bad APIs. An API is the user interface for other programmers. I'm a firm believer that user interfaces must be tested with real users, and as early as possible.

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    Tagged: java.net

    LA-stravaganza

    September 17th, 2006

    One of the great things about my job is that I get to go speak to customers and other groups of Java developers. Even more amazing than the fact that Sun pays me to do this is that people actually show up to listen to me. I'm sure you've all had those times where you feel like you are still the dumb kid who just graduated and somehow you have to make everyone around you think you actually know what you are talking about. While I know that I'm a Java expert and have interesting things to say, a little part of me is still scared. What if I say the wrong thing? What if someone asks me a question that I can't answer. What if I walk into a room full of SWT lovers?! The agony!

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    Tagged: java.net

    Source to the Magnifying Glass Hack

    September 11th, 2006

    In response to my Meet the Engineer interview on Sun.com a reader asked for the source to my magnifying glass component (originally detailed in this blog). I haven't given it out because it was meant to be part of a larger framework for managing the glasspane and implementing other cool hacks. Alas I have simply not had the time. Java 6 and Java 5 updates combined with my SwingLabs and community work simply have taken up all of my available resources.

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    Tagged: java.net

    The best is yet to come

    September 9th, 2006

    Yes the best is yet to come, and won't it be fine...

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    Tagged: java.net

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