The Galaxy

jMaki supports PHP 5

qouyang — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 07:44:19 -0800

Via TheAquarium, the latest jMaki release now supports PHP 5! See Greg's blog for details on how to use jMaki to add reuseable Ajax enabled widgets to your PHP application.

The jMaki beta is scheduled for next week. See Carla's blog describing some of the other features available in the release candidate.

Ajax, php, jMaki

Web 2.0 : Jargon or Buzzword?

qouyang — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 08:39:41 -0800

Are you someone who is afraid or proud of ever sounding like a geek? Kathy Sierra recently wrote an interesting blog on the benefit of using jargons. She also argues that "web 2.0" is more like a jargon (good) than a buzzword (bad). Whether you agree with her stand on "web 2.0", or disagree, the blog would definitely help a closet geek to come out and talk all that jargon! :-D

Web2.0

Why Use Java DB For Web Client Storage?

qouyang — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 10:40:05 -0800

In his recent blog, David Van Couvering writes about the value of a relational database when implementing local storage in web clients. Some of the key benefits he sees include ACID transactions, query capabilities, joins and well-established standards etc. Check out David's blog and find out why he also favors JavaDB in particular.

JavaDB

SDN Channel - Jump into JavaScript is Live

qouyang — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:30:15 -0800

The JavaScript edition of SDN channel is live at https://blogs.sun.com/sdnchannel. Find out what's happening with JavaScript including all the tools and resources that can be leveraged to build dynamic web solutions. News from this month includes an interview with Roberto Chinnici as he discusses the benefits of Phobos; Ed Burns talks about JSF and why server-side frameworks are so important. Keep an eye out for the SDN channel, cuz more exciting news are coming your way!

JavaScript

Phobos Meets Atom, REST

qouyang — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:24:08 -0800

In his recent blog, Roberto discusses some interesting aspects of building the application atomserver, which is an implementation of the Atom Publishing Protocol v9 in Phobos. The application also uses some new REST libraries. For more details, please check out Roberto's blog.

Phobos, Atom, REST

New jMaki release supports Mochikit, Dojo and NetBeans plugin

qouyang — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 10:01:29 -0800

Via TheAquarium, jMaki is a framework that provides a lightweight model for reusable Ajax-enabled widgets. The lastest (.5.1) release of jMaki includes:

Most significant in this release are the jMaki Layouts which are available in the Netbeans Plugin with templates.
Improvements to the widget.json configuration files to provide better property editing support in Netbeans.
Mochikit 1.3.4 support
Dojo is now updated to the shipping .4
Yahoo YUI Widgets has been updated to .11.4
Value Change Listner Support was add to the JSF component view of jMaki
Many updates to the current widget set

At the same time, the jMaki NetBeans plugin was updated to include a new stylized JSP wizard. See a previous Aquarium entry for more info.

Ajax, jMaki, JSF

More on Debugging in Phobos Using NetBeans

qouyang — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:42:50 -0800

Hot on the heels of Pramod's blog about how to set up the debugging feature in NetBeans for Phobos, Roberto is giving us more details on the new features of NetBeans including how to develope and debug a Phobos application. Hopefully with the help of both Pramod's and Roberto's nice demonstration, not to mention the cool features in NetBeans, your adventure into Phobos will be a breeze. Let us know what you think!

Phobos, NetBeans

ServerSide Javascript Debugging in Netbeans for Phobos

qouyang — Thu, 9 Nov 2006 12:16:37 -0800

If you think debugging a JavaScript program is hard, try debugging a server side JavaScript program. Things get really tricky real fast. Matt Stevens, Ludo and Roberto come to the rescue! They have been working on a NetBeans plugin for debugging those server side JavaScripts in Phobos. Pramod was kind enough to provide the steps on how to setup the debugger. Before a stable build is available, it still takes a few steps to set things up. But it is worth it!

Phobos, NetBeans

Web 2.0 Summit Highlights

qouyang — Thu, 9 Nov 2006 11:43:18 -0800

The third annual Web 2.0 Summit is happening in San Francisco. The LaunchPad is a popular event where pre-elected startups show up their stuff to the audience. For a summary of all the companies presenting this year at LaunchPad, see Michael Arrington's blog. Richard MacManus also provided a review of the Web 2.0 Summit LaunchPad. Check them out!

Web2.0

New Stylized JSP wizards for NetBeans jMaki Users

qouyang — Wed, 8 Nov 2006 12:38:05 -0800

Ludo and Greg have been working hard to provide new Ajax jMaki plugins. Ludo has just reported that a new set of JSP wizards is now available to create JSP files following well defined CSS styles. See more details at Ludo's blog.

NetBeans, jMaki, Ajax

RoR and Blojsom and more Web 2.0 Apps on Sun Web Server

qouyang — Thu, 2 Nov 2006 18:10:51 -0800

Via TheAquarium, Sun's WebServer 7.0 provides a Java Web Tier as well as good connectivity (NSAPI, Fast-CGI) with many non-Java applications. As an example of the former, Seema also shows how to run Blojsom, which follows from Blojsom on GlassFish, as did our previously reported Phobos on Web Server. As an example of the latter, Seema describes in detail how to Run Ruby On Rails.

All together, the Sun WebServer is a good Web 2.0 Platform, and it will get better as one will be able to run the latest Java Web Tier by Plugging the GlassFish Web Tier.

Web2.0, Phobos, Ruby, Rails, Blojsom, Sun, WebServer, GlassFish

New NetBeans 5.5 Plugin for jMaki

qouyang — Thu, 2 Nov 2006 06:21:45 -0800

Via TheAquarium, Greg and Ludo have posted a new screencast showing the NetBeans 5.5 plugin for jMaki. The Plugin shows a palette of widgets and lets you create a project using jMaki, drop a widget into a presentation page (like JSP), and then customize via an editor the properties of the jMaki widget. The development cycle is very fast since all that happens is a that a new (JSP) page is reloaded. Simple, useful and very compelling.

The jMaki Web Site has much more information including a Get Started section, a Gallery of Widgets (33 when I checked), the actual jMaki plugin, the screencast, and much more. Check it out!

Tools, NetBeans, jMaki, AJAX

The Habits of Highly Effective Web 2.0 Sites

qouyang — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 08:56:39 -0800

Dion Hinchcliffe, after his popular blog "Best Web 2.0 Software List", has recently written about the habits of highly effective Web 2.0 sites. Looking beyond Ajax and the visual site design aspect of Web 2.0, Dion tries to "capture the deeper design patterns and business models that seem to be powering the most successful Web sites and online companies today". He concludes that the essentials of leveraging Web 2.0 include ease of use, aggressively add feedback loops to everything, continuous release cycles etc etc. See Dion's blog here.

Web 2.0

Firefox, JavaScript, and the Future of the Web

qouyang — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 08:41:06 -0700

Brendan Eich, the creator of JavasScript, gave the final keynote at the Ajax Experience Conference. He showcased some of the new features in JavaScript 1.7 that are shipped with Firefox 2.0, and talked about the future of JavaScript and the Web. He also addressed some concerns and controversies over JavaScript. "His honesty is a breath of fresh air." See Brendan Eich's presentation now available online.

JavaScript

JRuby JSR-223 engine uses version 0.9.1

qouyang — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:00:00 -0700

A. Sundararajan has just announced that JSR 223 JRuby script engine at scripting.dev.java.net has been updated to use the newly released JRuby 0.9.1. Check out A. Sundararajan's announcement and what's new in JRuby 0.9.1.

JRuby

Dojo 0.4 Released

qouyang — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 07:53:35 -0700

Dojo has just announced that the new version of the javascript toolkit 0.4 is now available for download. Some exciting new features in this release include:

•GFX Library - graphic library
•Internationalization Infrastructure
•Widget Infrastructure - namespace support, subwidgets
•New Widgets

See the Release Note for more details.

Dojo

Presentations Available on Glassfish Wiki

qouyang — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 13:12:10 -0700

Via TheAquarium, there have been more presentations added to the Glassfish Wiki Presentations Page. A couple of them might be of particular interests to the readers of TheGalaxy:

• JSF and AJAX (prezo)
• Scripting JSF and Phobos (prezo)

Learning, Presentations, JSF, AJAX, Phobos

SAML 2.0 in PHP

qouyang — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 10:02:31 -0700

For a change of view, today we have some news about OpenSSO. Via TheAquarium, over at Superpatterns, Pat Patterson has just announced the first drop of his SAML 2.0 PHP service provider code. There is more detail at that link, particularly in the linked docs, but, briefly, this is a collection of PHP scripts that SAML 2.0 enable a service provider, 'outsourcing' user authentication to an identity provider. This is very much 'proof-of-concept' code - contributions are welcomed, particularly from PHPers!

PHP, SAML, OpenSSO, Identity, Federation

JSON for Ajax Web services

qouyang — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 11:54:52 -0700

In his recent article, Daniel Rubio talks about the advantages of JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), and how JSON as an approach has recently gained popularity with Ajax services and Web-based clients. In this entry on TheServerSide, a discussion is open on Daniel's article. "What benefits have you been experiencing while using JSON? Do you agree that its recent boost in popularity has been due to Ajax?"

JSON, Ajax

Blog Claiming with OpenId on Technorati

qouyang — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 08:35:24 -0700

Technorati recently announced that bloggers will now be able to claim ownership of their blogs with OpenID credentials. The use of openID claims to be much easier than the number of different ways to verify authorship that have been long supported by Technorati. Check out the Technorati announcement and a related blog by Marshall Kirkpatrick.

Technorati

Java, JavaScript and Jython

qouyang — Mon, 2 Oct 2006 09:09:05 -0700

A. Sundararajan has blogged about Groovy and JRuby for Java programmers ([part 1], [part 2]), he now ventures into yet another script language, Jython. In his latest blog, he compares Jython with JavaScript and Java.

Jython

To Ajax, or Not to Ajax

qouyang — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 09:11:00 -0700

Are you in the process of trying to figure out if Ajax is for you? FrontForge has published an article on the top 8 evaluation criteria that you should consider. Each criterion is nicely explained with just the right amount of details. Check it out if you are still puzzling over Ajax.

AJAX

Intelligence community recommends Atom

qouyang — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 09:43:13 -0700

Both Tim Bray and Dave Johnson's blogs mentioned a study done by the U.S. Intelligence community, which compared RSS and Atom in numerous areas including standards, schemas and many more. The conclusion, the study recommends moving toward Atom. What do you think?

Feed, Atom, RSS

ResizeR: Script.aculo.us-ly Manipulate Image Online

qouyang — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 09:16:00 -0700

Thanks to the blog on an online image manipulation tool, ResizeR, this artistically challenged editor can finally create entries anywhere with an internet access. That is, when I am without iPhoto. But check out the Script.aculo.us effects on ResizeR.

AJAX, Script_aculo_us

Phobos and Sun Web Server 7.0

qouyang — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 08:15:54 -0700

Phobos (overview) is a lightweight framework for writing Web Applications using dynamic languages (JavaScript so far) exploiting the Java platform. Phobos builds can run either with GlassFish or with a plain Web Container, and in his latest blog, Mukesh shows in detail how to Run Phobos on Sun WebServer 7.0.

Sun's WebServer uses the Web Container from Sun Java System 8.2 (GlassFish's Ancestor), but the contract between the Web Server and the Java Web Tier is clearly defined followed by the GlassFish web tier and I'll ask if they can to publish the steps needed to try this out.

Kudos to TheAquarium Entry.

Phobos, Sun, WebServer

Persistence for AJAX Applications Talk

qouyang — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 07:37:35 -0700

At the upcoming AJAX World Conference and the ApacheCon, David Van Couvering is going to talk about how to build an AJAX enabled application that can run offline and then re-synchronize with the server, using Java DB as a local browser-embedded relational store. Events will take place in Santa Clara, CA and Austin, TX during the first a couple of weeks of October. Check them out if you are close by!

AJAX, JavaDB, Persistence

Java, Groovy and (J)Ruby

qouyang — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 08:27:27 -0700

In his two part blog ([1], [2]), A. Sundararajan gives Java programmers some pointers to jump start on scripting languages such as Groovy and JRuby. Let's see how different idioms could make one's head spin. But with the help from A. Sundararajan, it is a less bumpy ride.

Groovy, JRuby

Grazr 1.0 Release

qouyang — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 13:06:00 -0700

Grazr just announced their 1.0 release. Grazr is a publishing tool for feeds. It lets you quickly and easily display RSS, RDF, Atom, and OPML files on any Web page so they can be viewed by any visitor to the site. TechCrunch has raved about this release. Check it out! Do you think "if HTML was the architecture of Web 1.0, RSS is the architecture of Web 2.0"? Is so, Grazr is going to play a big part in the future of web.

RSS OPML

Learning the New Web: AJAX Boot Camp

qouyang — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 08:49:02 -0700

In Learning the New Web series, we will recommend articles, web sites and books for users who would like to keep up with the ever changing web development world. Today's recommendation is an editor's personal favorite (and no, it didn't actually take me 10 weeks!): Sang Shin's FREE 10 week Online AJAX with Java Programming Course. The course covers the basics and introduces some of the popular AJAX tools, technologies and frameworks including JSON, DWR, Dojo, jMaki, Wicket, GWT and JavaServer Faces. There's also a whole Class dedicated to writing good JavaScript. It was really nice to not only learn about the technology but also the tools that go with it. It would help anyone to hit the ground running afterwards.

If there are any tutorials that you would like to share, please write to us at thegalaxy@sun.com.

AJAX, Dojo, DWR, jMaki, free

Welcome to the Galaxy!

qouyang — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 11:14:07 -0700

Welcome to TheGalaxy. This is a blog that will bring you the latest news about the next generation of web technology. We, the editors, would love to hear your thoughts on the rapidly evolving web development arena. Please send your comments or your blogs to thegalaxy@sun.com. We will highlight your entry. TheGalaxy is officially open for business!

TheGalaxy Web2.0