I’ve been an iPhone user for about 1.5 years now. I’m mostly happy with it, but I’d kinda like to write applications for it. The problem, though, is that the iPhone uses Objective-C (and I don’t consider writing web apps the same thing as writing an iPhone app ; ). Enter Google’s Android. I can use my existing Java knowledge to write applications for an Android device, giving me a much smaller learning curve. The question, then, is which device should I get? There are several available, unlike the iPhone, so the choice can be difficult.

Recently, I ran across 6 of the Best Android Mobile Devices, which has a pretty nice run down of six different devices, not all of which are phones. The problem with this particular comparison, was that each phone was on a different page, making comparison more difficult as I had to switch tabs a lot. My solution, then, is the table below. Inspired by the link above, though taking most of the data from the devices’ product pages, I’ve compiled the following table. Obviously, this isn’t every Android phone on the market. I took the three listed in the article above, and added one other phone that I’ve been considering. Hopefully this table will be helpful in those looking at these devices. (more…)

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As 2009 winds down to a close, it is my hope that you and your family have a very merry Christmas. It is my prayer that in the hustle and bustle of the season, the real meaning — the birth of the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ — is not lost:

Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ[a] the Lord. — Luke 2:10-11

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In Part I, I introduced the new YUI-backed Scales dataTable component. In this installment in the series, we’ll take a look at another new component available in Scales 2.0, sc:autoComplete. (more…)

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This is a little late notice, but we at Sun are holding a “virtual conference” covering GlassFish v3, JavaEE 6, etc. You can find details here. It starts in 30 minutes (10:00 CST, 8:00 PST).

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While we’re making product announcements, I might as well mention that NetBeans 6.8 is available today as well. I really think NetBeans is the best Free Java multi-language IDE on the market. It’s by no means perfect, but I like it a lot.¹ Quoting from the release: (more…)

Popularity: 7% [?]

Today, the GlassFish team is pleased to announce the release of GlassFish v3. This release marks the first production-ready release of a Java EE 6 compliant application server. It also marks the culmination of a tremendous engineering effort to transform the very capable but monolithic GlassFish v2 into a small, sleek and scalable modular system, built on OSGi. You can get all the details over at The Aquarium.

Of all the features in this release, the two I’m the proudest of are the console, on which I work during the day, and JSF 2, on which I work when I can. The console, while it looks similar to that in v2 (somewhat by design), has undergone a pretty serious makeover. We’ve removed the frameset, which solved a number of issues on both the client and the server, we introduced the use of the YUI LayoutManager to help with the page layout, and we implemented Ajax-based navigation (which was one of my major tasks, along with Ken Paulsen). The result is, I think, a lighter, faster console. It posed some interesting challenges, but I think we were able to work everything out to make a very nice and snappy console. We’re not resting on our laurels, though. Like the rest of the server, our team has some grand plans for upcoming releases in the console.

On the backend, we had to do a fair amount of rework to accomadate all the changes made to support the modularity introduced for v3. For example, as we demonstrated at a Hands-on-Lab at JavaOne, the console is pluggable, which allows developers, OEMs, admins, etc to create and install plugins that add functionality to the console. In fact, that’s how we delivered all of the non-core functionality in the console. If you’re running the web profile, you won’t see anything JMS-related, for instance.

The other feature I’m pretty proud of is JSF 2. As an Expert Group member and sadly not-too-active-committer (at the moment) on Mojarra, the JSF implementation we ship with GlassFish, I’m really, really pleased with how JSF 2 turned out. In what spare time I can find, I’ve been doing some application development as well as component development using the new spec, and it’s been a joy to work with. From annotations to composite components and more, JSF 2 is just really easy to work with (I hope to blog more on that in the near future).

In addition to those, v3 offers CDI (via Weld), JPA 2, EJB 3.1, Servlet 3.0, and on and on. There should be something for everyone, so do yourself a favor and check it out. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

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The migration of Mojarra Scales to JSF 2, adding new components has become much easier due to JSF 2′s new composite component feature. In the past couple of weeks, this new capability has paid off in spades as Mojarra Scales has gotten (so far) three new components in rapid succession. In this, the first part of a multi-part series, we’ll take a look at the most complex of the new components, sc:dataTable. (more…)

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As a “computer guy,” I get asked to help with all things computer-related. My church’s web site is no different. I was recently asked to help set up a new site. Since my time is limited and they need to get things going without waiting on me, I thought I would document my process for them, simple as it is. It occurred to me that it might be generally useful, so here it is. If I was wrong about that, please feel free to keep surfing. (more…)

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With the recent migration of Mojarra Scales to JSF 2, the old location of the Mojarra Scales demo was no longer adequate (upgrading that server posed some issues). For that reason, I have moved the demo to a new home. This server should be more up-to-date (both in terms of the application as well as the application server — which is GlassFish v3, of course — that runs it). When accessing the application, please keep in mind that it’s on an old server that’s running on an AT&T U-verse line, and the download times will reflect that.

I’d also like to not that this showcases a couple of new components at the moment. I’ve begun an implementation of the YUI data table widget. At the time of this posting, basic table functions work, including client-side sorting. More complex functionality, such as Ajax updates, are in the offing.

Another new component, which the demo uses extensively, is the excellent SyntaxHighligher script from Alex Gorbatchev. The demo uses this new component to show the page source for each demo, finally allowing you to see a given component in action, as well seeing the page markup that makes those components. The demo is still in flux, so some things aren’t quite “perfect” yet. For example, Safari really hates the markup the demo produces, which is a bug in the demo application itself. Hopefully, that will soon be fixed. For now, Safari users will need to use another browser.

As I’ve noted, Scales has been migrated to JSF 2. While most components are working as expected, there are likely some minor issues to work out. If you run into any of these issues, or if you’d like to see extra functionality in any of the components, please feel free to file an issue on the Scales issue tracker on the Kenai project site.

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While JSF has had Ajax support for a long time now, it has always been through external libraries such as Ajax4Jsf/RichFaces, ICEfaces, DWR, DynaFaces, etc. With JSF 2, the framework now has first class, standardized support for Ajax. This is good news on several fronts. For those that want Ajax support but would rather not import another library, that capability is now baked in, and, for those familiar with a4j or DynaFaces, it should look very familiar. However, for those that don’t mind the external dependency, the standardized Ajax will make it much easier to mix and match component libraries on the same page, an issue that has plagued JSF for while. In this post, I’d like to take the first approach and show how easy it is to achieve Ajaxy updates on your h:dataTable using only standard JSF. (more…)

Popularity: 33% [?]