Josh On Design

Since I joined the JavaFX team a few months ago I have spent some of my free time creating demos and learning the language. Most of my demos have been simple single class applications that highlight a particular language feature or graphical effect. After a while, though, I decided to write something bigger to prove it could be done and really stress test the language. As a result of feedback from me (and many other dedicated early adopters) we have some great improvements coming down the pipe.

As we head into the holiday season I'm feel pretty upbeat about the state of client Java. There are many challenges ahead, but things are better for client developers than they have been in close to a decade. Before I dive into the future let me do a quick recap.

The Java 6 developer preview (b88) for Mac OSX 10.4 (Tiger) does not run on 10.5 (Leopard). Having it still installed can cause a few problems with Leopard. In fact, using it on Tiger can cause issues because it's so different from Java 6 final that ships for Windows, Linux, and Solaris. Because of this I recommend you delete it and wait for the final Java 6 for Mac. (Apple no longer makes this older version available on their download site either).

As I write this I am speeding over the Atlantic at around 500 miles per hour towards a two week business trip. The goal is to work out further details of the JavaFX tools and plan our schedule for next year. (And no I'm not going to give you any details. That's not what this post is about :). As I'm finishing up emails and pondering my two weeks of meetings I'm struck by a question: How did we get here?

Yep. I'm heading to Prague again, this time for two weeks. Since I'll have a bit more free time than my usual whirlwind trips so I'm making an offer.

With NetBeans 6 beta 2 out (and the final version going into High Resistance-"thou shall not break things" mode) I thought it might take the opportunity to show you some of the cool things you can do with it. I am a client guy, of course, so I'm very excited by the new features we've built to let you create and deploy desktop applications easily and quickly. I also wanted to try experimenting with screencasts. Since development of client apps is so visual I think a visual way of explaining them is good. This is my first screencast so please provide feedback of what you like and don't like.

I just wanted to let you all know that NetBeans 6 Beta 2 is out. Over the next few weeks I'll have more posts about the cool new stuff in NB 6, but for now I just want you to know it's ready for download. A whole lot of work has gone into making sure it's quality work and I think it shows. In fact, Beta 2 is now my only IDE. I've deleted every other copy of NetBeans and Eclipse from my HD. I've gone in whole hog; and freed up a lot of disk space. :)

I'm in Chicago trying to restore my iPhone and here is the result.

I'm once again heading out to the MidWest Java Tech Days to talk about JavaFX. This time it will be Minneapolis (Tuesday the 16th) and Chicago (Thursday the 18th). I'll actually be in Chicago most of the day on Wednesday with nothing to do. Is there anything I absolutely must do or see when I'm in Chicago? Is there anyone with free time that day (or evening) who would like to hang out with a super Java geek like me? If so then let's plan to get together joshua.marinacci@sun.com.

I purchased an iPhone yesterday and tried to activate it. Foolish, I know, but I'm crazy like that. Activating my iPhone today (starting last night, really) proved to be a multi-hour ordeal involving Googling, and spending over an hour on hold with AT&T representatives. The root cause was my Atlanta area code phone number not matching the zipcode of the town where I live in Oregon. The registration software didn't make this clear, instead giving me obscure errors and eventually sending me an email requesting I call a 1800 number. Adding to the confusion, Apple's own email program put the message into my junk folder. Had I not thought to search my junk folder a few hours later I might still be holding an iBrick. Now, after two hours with customer service and almost 24 hours after receiving my phone, I am finally syncing some music.

I've got a free moment here at the MidWest Tech Days (and if you are in the MidWest you should be here too!) so I thought I would tally the votes generated by my previous blog:

I'm going to abuse my celebrity and world renowned fame today (world renowned means the 5 mile radius around my house, right?). I have a technical question to ask my wonderful audience of readers (who are all beautiful, smart, and above average). I've looked through the Javadocs and some tutorials without understanding a few details, so here goes.

I'm thinking of working on another article or two over the next few weeks, but I don't know what to write about. Oh sure, I have lots of ideas, but I don't know what's most interesting to you. Ultimately my writing competes with about 4.8 billion other things for your valuable attention, so I only want to write the things that you want to read. Rather than speculate endlessly about this I've decided to take it directly to the people and have you to vote for your favorite idea.

Every year lots of developers come to San Francisco for JavaOne. More than fifteen thousand I think. But even more don't come to JavaOne; which might be a good thing since there are over four million of us Java developers out there. That would be a big cafeteria! Think of the line for lunch! Fortunately there is an alternative.

I recently gave a presentation at the Portland Java Users Group about Java FX. After talking to some of the fine members of PJUG I realize that there is a lot of confusion about JavaFX and JavaFX script. JavaFX Script is just one part of the larger JavaFX umbrella. In fact, you don't even have to use JavaFX Script to gain many of the benefits of JavaFX! This weblog posting is my attempt to clear up a few things and get you excited about the future of client Java. After reading it I hope you will come away with a better understanding of what JavaFX is and why we created it.

My friends back at the Swing ranch have been working very hard on the new Nimbus look and feel for Swing. When I first saw it my only complaint was that I couldn't get my grubby little hands on it right away. Well, it sounds like we shouldn't have to wait too much longer. Jasper's weblog has all of the details.

I'm exhausted so I'll just make this a brief lead-in to more blogs coming next week. The short news is that I've switched teams (again :). I'm now on the JavaFX team working on new tools. In fact, I've been in Prague all week meeting my new coworkers, as we hail from around the globe.

I have been in the open source world for a long time. Pretty much since I first installed Slackware in my sophomore year of college (I'll leave calculating that year and my age as an exercise to the reader). I have always felt that open source and commercial interests, when managed properly, can have a wonderful balance that benefits both the consumer, developers, and companies. That's one of the reasons I came to work for Sun, in fact. At Sun I get paid to work on open source software, which was pretty much my dream since college.

I know this isn't really Java related, but I just got an email that Sun's UltraSparc T2 launched today. Even though I'm not a hardware guy and I've forgotten most of my CompE classes from college, I'm still interested in the changing state of the art chip design.

It's not often that I see offers to pay someone to do a contract job on an open source project, with all of the code contributed back to the project. I know lots of people who work on particular projects full time as part of their job (myself, for example), but rarely do I see a direct offer of payment to have someone implement a particular feature. Perhaps the fact that I've never seen it on my projects means that my projects are perfect! :)