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past future

    NetBeans day success

    May 8th, 2007

    Hey guys. Real quick. I just thought you'd like that we (the NetBeans GUI Builder team) showed Open Street Maps on stage at CommunityOne in front of about >400 people. We did a demo where we built a database application live on stage that combines famous sites in London with photos from WikiPedia and the JXMapKit running Open Street Maps. And we did the whole thing with only a single line of actual code. Everything else was visually assembled in less that 5 minutes. I told the audience that we were using OSM which is "literally created by guys on bikes with GPS trackers. It's amazing". Everyone was very impressed. We'll have screencasts up once we finish JavaOne.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Beans binding rocks!

    May 3rd, 2007

    I was working on one of our NetBeans demos for Monday's Matisse session and it occurred to me. I was actually having fun putting together a little program! I grabbed some of our cool little beans from SwingLabs then wired them up to some text fields using zero code. Just binding expressions created visually using NetBeans M9. It was really easy and kinda fun. Beans binding makes the beans we've assembled in SwingX-WS in particular a whole lot more useful.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Too busy to blog

    April 25th, 2007

    I've been too busy to blog for the past couple of weeks. Sadly this will continue for two more weeks until JavaOne begins. Don't worry, though. It's all in a good cause as you will see some great things shortly. In the meantime I leave you with a quick comic that actually made me laugh out loud.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Too busy to blog

    April 25th, 2007

    I've been too busy to blog for the past couple of weeks. Sadly this will continue for two more weeks until JavaOne begins. Don't worry, though. It's all in a good cause as you will see some great things shortly. In the meantime I leave you with a quick comic that actually made me laugh out loud.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Back from the demo

    April 9th, 2007

    It was completely exhausting but it went quite well. Just to catch you up, last week I drove nine hours down to Santa Clara, CA to spend three days working on my demo then show it to the demo people. Here's how it works:

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    Tagged: java.net

    Back to the Bay

    April 1st, 2007

    I'm heading back to the bay area this morning for a couple of days to take part in our annual Java One demo preview. This is when we each pitch our own Java One demos in a heated Java battle royale (tm) for one of the coveted few spots in the keynotes. I think you'll be happy with what I've put together. Wish me luck!

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    Tagged: java.net

    Yahoo Widgets 4 is released

    March 22nd, 2007

    Yahoo Widgets 4 was just released today and I must say it looks pretty cool. They added a dock mode with mini-widgets and auto-widget updating. Part of me is frustrated because this is one of the things we have that they didn't until today.

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    Tagged: java.net

    AB5k Widgets in Depth

    March 21st, 2007

    Well it's been two weeks since AB5k was released and the response has been, well, interesting. Some people really love it. Others have complained it's slow and buggy (which it is), and still others ask "why make another widget system, but this time in Java?". We got somewhat panned at JavaLobby in particular. So, two questions to answer: too early and why Java?

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    Tagged: java.net

    Back from the Java Posse Roundup

    March 18th, 2007

    Now that I've had a week to recuperate, and heal from my poor attempts at snowboarding, I can tell you about where I was the week before last. From the 5th of March to the 9th I was in Crested Butte Colorado for the Java Posse Roundup.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Posse Brain Dump: JavaDocs from the year 2020

    March 14th, 2007

    At the Java Posse Roundup last week we had some wonderful evening sessions called Lighting Talks. During these sessions each participant had 5 minutes to give their entire presentation. This necessitates, of course, brevity and clarity above all. And of course, since this was the evening, we were all sitting around munching on BBQ, drinking beer, and laughing away during the proceedings. So in short, it was a lot of fun. Some of the talks were Java related at all. Ido Green from Yahoo introduced us to the sport of orienteering and Joe Nuxoll from the Java Posse gave several presentations about the physics of race car driving. Fascinating stuff.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Quick updates: Desktop Matters, Java Posse Roundup, AB5k, and more

    March 12th, 2007

    I got back from the Java Posse Roundup yesterday. Due to complications with my flights I was forced to spend an annoying Saturday night in a hotel in Denver. Still, the conference overall was worth it. I've got a bunch of things to share with you over the next few days so I'm just going to give you a few quick updates today.

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    Tagged: java.net

    AB5k: our all Java widget system is released

    March 7th, 2007

    I'm attending the Java Posse Roundup right now and won't have a chance to post in detail about this until next week, but since the news is out I wanted to make sure I let you all know what's up.

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    Tagged: java.net

    My Java One Talks

    March 3rd, 2007

    Just a quick post as I'm rushing to be ready for the Java Posse Roundup conference next week.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Netbeans M7 and the amazing new Web Start plugin

    February 27th, 2007

    Milestone 7

    Milestone 7 of NetBeans 6.0 recently came out and I tried it out for the first time today. Now I know what you are thinking: "Don't you work on NetBeans? Don't you work for NetBeans?!" Well yes, I do. But I'm working on a branch that hasn't migrated to the 6.0 codebase yet. It will in the future (and I'll have blogs on it) but for now what I see every day looks pretty much like NetBeans 5.5. Trying M7 is my first taste of NetBeans of the future (other than my own highly excellent work, of course. but more on that later :) .

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    Tagged: java.net

    Tricked out maps and a new tile provider.

    February 22nd, 2007

    In previous blogs I introduced the JXMapViewer and JXMapKit, all part of the SwingX-WS project. We're still working on improving these classes and have more good stuff coming. I recently added support for non-rectangular maps, which makes the 1:2 Blue Marble map tile properly. I also added variable size tiles which allows the JXMapKit zoom out further. These are all nice improvements, but don't really matter if mapping isn't important.

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    Tagged: java.net

    First release of JSR 296

    January 30th, 2007

    Hans just announced the first prototype implementation of JSR 296, the Swing Application Framework. I'm very excited about this because it will make Swing applications a lot easier to build and more maintainable. I'm even more excited because we will have top notch support for JSR 296 in NetBeans 6.0. I know this because I'm one of the developers working on it.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Free Projects Part 4: an LCD Controller

    January 19th, 2007

    My sincere apologies. I completely forgot to post the code from the last free project, sketch pad, so here it is. I also forgot that I have one more project to give away, one very different than anything else I've ever done. This one involves some hardware.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Tag! I'm it

    January 4th, 2007

    Some of you may have seen the five things you don't know about me meme going around. The idea is that someone tags you, you post to your blog five interesting things that people don't know about you, and then you tag five more people who must do the same. Romain Guy got it a few days ago and linked to me, so now it's my turn.

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    Tagged: java.net

    Rockin' 2007

    January 2nd, 2007

    Well, the new year has come and my vacation is over. I the last three weeks I gave a way a bunch of projects, released the JXMapViewerApplet, I had my entire family fly to Oregon from all over the country, and got married to the beautiful Jennifer Greenup. I even got to stop for some coffee (see photo below). Not bad for a supposed vacation.

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    Tagged: java.net

    A Mapping Christmas Present

    December 22nd, 2006

    You may get several Christmas presents this year so I'd like to give you all mine first. Best to be early than late and forgotten. :) You can scroll down to the screenshot and link if you want, but if you prefer some delightful Christmas suspense begin reading here. You might want to grab some egg nog first. In fact, adding a splash of rum might help too. We've got a lot to go through.

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    Tagged: java.net

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