The Web 2.0 Revolution

Web 2.0

The emerging Web 2.0 initiative promises to revolutionize the internet. From online collaborative tools such as Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Thinkfree , and various blogging utilities, business entities will be able to create their own customized extensible knowledge bases.

Applications will be richer and more user friendly whether they use server based AJAX embeded technologies such as Adobe Flex 2.0, the Google Web Toolkit, Microsoft Silverlight, or Java Server Faces. Rich Internet Applications can also be written in Java or JavaFX and deployed using Java Web Start.

A second cup of Java please!

Java has been around for quite some time, and is strategically positioned to play a key role in the Web 2.0 revolution. Recent improvements in the Java Virtual Machine have made it possible to now develop faster and ultimately thinner clients that can leverage web services (JAX-WS 2.0+). High speed internet access has also made downloading the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) much more practical, especially in homogeneous network environments. Java Web Start applications offer a desktop alternative to AJAX since they are browser independent and do not tie up server resources with asychronous calls. Java Web Start applications are also secure since they run in the Java Sandbox. Futhermore, most AJAX frameworks make the assumption that javascript is enabled within the browser. Finally, Java will become increasingly ubiquitous, given the careful thought behind the recent Open Source initiative by Sun Microsystems.

To see a simple working example of a Rich Internet Application click the launch button (try the print and view menus in the application that is launched):

Important: If clicking on the launch button does not work then click on the GET JAVA SOFTWARE icon below to install latest version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). It is required to run software written in Java programming language. Microsoft does not automatically include the Sun Microsystems version of the JRE with Windows!

For Further Reading

The Thinkfree Online Office Suite

The Official Java Web Site

Java Web Start Guide

Java Sketchbook: Digging into Java Web Start

What is AJAX?

Ajax Security Vulnerablities Could Pose Serious Risk

Ajax vs Java

How to disable or enable JavaScript

Meet Scott Violet, Architect for the Swing Toolkit Team at Sun Microsystems

Check out this book reader by clicking on one of the pages.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Andoid and the Google Phone

There has been some speculation over how java will be optimized for the Google OS. The fact of the matter is that google has already been optimizing java for the browser with the Google Web Toolkit. The question is how much farther has the Google Web Toolkit project gotten in terms of absorbing the entire jvm.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Fine grained synchronization in Java

Here is and example of using fine grained synchonization with threads. In this example we use a variation of the producer / consumer problem. The example uses a spender and saver that share the same bank account. Only in the variation there are four transactions for each thread. An intrinsic lock is applied to the Balance object. Rentrant Synchronization is used as the lock is acquired and reaquired. The spenders thread is locked as soon as there is an overdraft. This thread is then released whenever the saver thread deposits money and notifies the spender thread.

Click here to see the source code for my program along with the output

Friday, May 25, 2007

Applet / Web Start load times greatly improved

Get the latest version of the JRE by clicking on the download icon. Sun had to improve the load times of the Applet and Web Start for JavaFX (Sun's new scripting language) and to compete with flash. Applet's no longer show the waiting to load feature when using a high speed connection

Here is another cool site for some java 3d demos

https://j3d-webstart.dev.java.net/test/