J. O'Conner

Not really finding theJavaFX community anywhere else, I’ve created one. Sure, the site itself is ugly as hell now, but that will change…if the community wills it. My intention is that YOU will take this over, you the community, you the JavaFX user.

Here’s what you have from me:

1. a decent domain name that communicates the purpose pretty well; that’s learningjavafx.org
2. a community content management system that can support users, forums, blogs, aggregated site feeds, uploads, etc. It’s Drupal. I evaluated others. This works.
3. a willing host to provide this to the community. That’s me.

I’ll help; I’ll lead; I’ll guide — as much as you want anyway. If you have experience doing this elsewhere, let me know. I’ll let you run a part of the site, moderate a forum, whatever you like. Let me know your interest level, and we’ll figure this out!

The primary purpose I have for the site is a single place for group discussion, articles, blogs, forums — all about JavaFX of course.

Email me at john@joconner.com. Let’s do this as a community.

You might want to go directly over the the JavaFX website to download the JavaFX SDK, but if you work in NetBeans 6.5 you don’t have to bother. JavaFX 1.0 is available to NetBeans 6.5 users with only a few mouse clicks. Seriously, only a few mouse clicks will get the JavaFX SDK plugin for you and integrate it directly into your NetBeans 6.5 IDE. Here’s how:

1. Select Tools->Plugins from your NetBeans 6.5 menu.
2. Select the Available Plugins tab.
3. Click on the Reload Catalog button just to make sure you have a fresh copy of all available plugins
4. Scroll down the plugin list to find the JavaFX 1.0 plugin, and click on its check box. You can also select a JavaFX debugger and several demos in the same area of the plugin list!
5. Click the Install button
6. Continue working until the download is finished and restart NetBeans IDE

That’s it. Now NetBeans 6.5 has the JavaFX 1.0 SDK integrated directly. You should notice a new JavaFX Project type available to you when you select File->New Project

Sorry for the short post, but I have to get back to my NetBeans IDE and JavaFX. I’ll be back later with more information about my initial overview of the SDK, the language, and much more!

Several months ago, I submitted a bug against NetBeans 6.1. Sure, I expected someone to see the bug, but I didn’t expect the real and substantial interactions that followed.

After logging the bug, I received an email thanking me for my submission. A couple days later, when a NetBeans engineer was able to evaluate the problem, I received another email…this time with comments and even questions just for me. I responded. The NetBeans team responded and made comments on the bug report. The team engaged me, asked questions, and took my feedback seriously.

What an amazing experience! I was impressed by the team’s commitment to engage with its community, to interact directly with an individual.

Just yesterday, I received another email…this time to let me know that the bug fix is in NetBeans 6.5. The NetBeans community didn’t forget about me. I guess someone figured that I’d want to know the status of a bug…especially since I took the time to report it in the first place. They were right; I was interested.

I’ve always known that I’m a NetBeans user, but I would never have gone so far as to call myself a community member. I feel differently after this experience though. I’m glad to be part of the NetBeans community. If you use NetBeans, you’re part of the community too!

As a community member, exercise your rights to be influential in shaping NetBeans. You use NetBeans. Now do something to shape it and to improve it.

How can you get more involved in the NetBeans community? Here are some ideas:

• Write about your NetBeans experiences and share with others. Post your NetBeans knowledge in a blog!
• Create a plugin. I can’t think of a better way to learn how NetBeans is organized and designed.
• Help write documentation
• Join a mailing list or forum. Ask a question. Answer a question
• Attend a NetBeans community event
• or…submit a bug report!

Getting involved is easy, and there are dozens of ways to participate in this thing we call the NetBeans Community. Pick one of these suggestions, or find your own way to contribute. It’s really pretty simple to get involved.

Jersey is the reference implementation of JSR 311, the specification for creating RESTful web services on the Java platform. NetBeans 6.1, the existing, current version of NetBeans, contains a copy of the Jersey library, but it may be outdated now. Recently, the Jersey implementation reached version 1.0, and NetBeans 6.1 contains a copy of an earlier 0.8 release.

If you’re already using the NetBeans 6.5 release candidate, you also have the Jersey 1.0 library. The truth is, however, that we can’t all adopt pre-release, beta software. If you fall into the latter group and need to continue using NetBeans 6.1, you may want to update your Jersey library to get the final, 1.0 version. In this blog entry, I’ll show you how to update your Jersey libraries in NetBeans 6.1.

Download the latest, stable release of the Jersey implementation. I don’t particularly like the way that the library is provided. The download page requires that you analyze your needs first, and you must select the set of jar files you need. This is difficult for the beginning Jersey user. I suggest an all-in-one download — perhaps a zip file — that provides EVERYTHING a beginning Jersey user might need. I’ll lead you through this for now, but you must understand that your real needs may actually differ from what I suggest as a basic set of starter files. Again, you need to read the download page to understand the full set of libraries and their dependencies.

In my opinion, a beginning user needs the following files to create a Jersey enabled, REST service:

• jersey-bundle.jar
• jsr311-api.jar
• asm.jar
• Jersey javadoc

Put this files together in a library directory. Put them anywhere. For this example, I’ve put them in c:\bin\jersey. From now on, I’ll refer to your directory of Jersey files as JERSEY_HOME.

Create the Jersey_1.0 library in NetBeans. Open NetBeans 6.1 and select Tools->Libraries. You should see a dialog like this:

Select the New Library… option at the bottom of the dialog. You’ll see a prompt for the new libary’s name. Let’s call it Jersey_1.0

Add Jersey jar files to the Jersey_1.0 library. Do this by selecting the Add JAR/folder… button in the Library Manager for the new libary you’ve just created. Navigate to your JERSEY_HOME directory and add each jar file to the library.

Add the Jersey library to your project. Now you have the updated Jersey 1.0 jar files. They are available to your applications when you add your new library to your application project. Right-click on your project in the project view, select Properties. Then select the Libraries option in the Project Properties dialog. Now you can select the Add Library… option on the right side.

Find your Jersey_1.0 library in the available libraries list. Now you’ve got it! You have the updated Jersey 1.0 libraries in your Netbeans application project.

Over the years, I’ve helped many organizations internationalize their software products. One of the most common misunderstandings is how Unicode will help their product. Customers sometimes mistakenly believe that Unicode support will be sufficient to internationalize their products. Sometimes they believe that Unicode “support” is a single, yes-no, on-off ability, when instead Unicode support is typically implemented in various stages and levels.

Unicode is a character encoding standard. It’s a big standard, with lots of nuances. Your products can implement “Unicode support” in many ways. The result is that those products will be able to manipulate, process, store, and perhaps even display the world’s scripts in a variety of ways BUT not usually in all ways. Your product’s ability to support Unicode is not a binary ability; instead, you should understand that products can have “Unicode support” in a variety of levels. In the most simple case, your product might only store and retrieve Unicode characters correctly. At a more sophisticated level, your product may be able to sort, search, or display Unicode characters. Again, Unicode “support” in a product cannot be evaluated by a single check-box or yes-no answer. Typically, products support Unicode in some ways but not in others.

Implementing even the most sophisticated levels of Unicode support doesn’t mean your product is internationalized. Internationalization is the process of preparing a software code base to be easily localized. Internationalization creates a product that has no particular bias towards a single culture or language. That product can be localized for a specific culture. Unicode support can be a key component of an internationalization effort, but it is only one component. Like Unicode support, your internationalization support will have different levels of sophistication and ability.

To summarize, products can support Unicode in a variety of ways. Supporting Unicode does not usually mean that your product has the ability to perform every possible function on Unicode characters. Instead, “support” usually means that you can do some things with Unicode but probably not others. Additionally, supporting Unicode isn’t the only step to internationalize your products. Unicode is only one step, an important step. Internationalization is the process of creating a product that is easier to localize, one that has cultural biases removed so that a specific culture or locale can be supported more easily after localization. You might use Unicode as a step in your internationalization efforts, but Unicode itself doesn’t create an internationalized product.

Contact me or leave a comment if you have questions about how Unicode can help your product. If I can help, I will. If I can’t, I probably know someone who can.

Unicode is a character set standard. This particular standard assigns a unique number to every character used around the globe, regardless of written and spoken language, computing platform, or application. Unicode includes all the characters used from other more limited character sets. Prior to Unicode, smaller character sets assigned character values differently from each other. Unicode unifies all other character sets; every character gets its own, unique value.

You can get more information about Unicode from the Unicode Home Page.

JSR 310: A New Java Date/Time API by Jesse Farnham — Java SE’s Date and Calendar classes leave much to be desired. Will the third time be the charm? JSR 310, tracking for inclusion in Java SE 7, once again tries to offer a comprehensive date and time API, borrowing much of its design from the popular Joda Time API. In this article, Jesse Farnham takes a look at JSR 310′s concepts and how they may yet bring sense to dates and times in Java.

Language and geographic environment are two important influences on our culture. They create the system in which we interpret other people and events in our life. They also affect, even define, proper form for presenting ourselves and our thoughts to others. To communicate effectively with another person, we must consider and use that person’s culture, language, and environment.

Read Understanding Locale in the Java Platform for more details about how to use locale in your Java applications.

Adding input methods and font support for Japanese is a trivial process for Windows XP and Vista. After moving my laptop from XP to Ubuntu Linux, I realize that familiarity is…well…comfortable. I’m a little lost.

Really all I want to do is enable the Japanese input methods on this new, shiny Ubuntu 8.04 system. I tried installing SCIM and an input method called “Anthy”. Sigh…I couldn’t get it to work on first try, so I removed it. Of course I’ll try again, but I’ll do some Yahoo/Google search homework first.

Instead of loading and working with ResourceBundle files directly, you will use the ResourceManager and ResourceMap framework classes to manage resources. A ResourceMap contains the resources defined in a specific ResourceBundle implementation. A map also contains links to its parent chain of ResoureMap objects. The parent chain for any class includes the ResourceMap for that specific class, the application subclass to which the class belongs, and all superclasses of your application up to the base Application class.

Continue reading ‘Managing resources in the Swing Application Framework (JSR 296)’ »