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• LiMo Foundation: Welcome - Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, and Vodafone established the LiMo Foundation to develop the Foundation Platform, a Linux-based, open mobile communication device software platform
• Erlang, the next Java - Erlang is going to be a very important language. It could be the next Java. Its main problem is that there is no big company behind it
• Judge Says Unix Copyrights Rightfully Belong to Novell - New York Times - In a decision that may finally settle one of the most bitter legal battles surrounding software widely used in corporate data centers, a federal judge ruled Friday afternoon that Novell, and not SCO, is the rightful owner of the copyrights for Unix OS.
• NIST endorses Microsoft’s Open XML in upcoming vote | Tech news blog - CNET News.com - The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is backing Microsoft’s effort to certify Office Open XML as an international standard.
• How well do you know prototype? - Here, I’ve collected most common use cases that do NOT use all of prototype’s capabilities and their simple solutions. I hope this will be a basic checklist to go through when developing for your next project
• Learning JavaFX Script, Part 1: An Introduction to JavaFX Script for Java Programmers - The JavaFX Script programming language (hereinafter referred to as JavaFX) is a declarative, statically typed scripting language from Sun. Because JavaFX Script is statically typed, it also has the same code structuring, reuse, and encapsulation features
• Real Web 2.0: Quick and dirty Web applications with bookmarklets - Bookmarklets are an important part of the Web 2.0 landscape, and they exemplify the qualities of Web 2.0 technology I tend to focus on in this column: transparency and openness.
• WebLogic Server Virtual Edition Launcher Appliance - WLS-VE is a combination of a Java application server (WebLogic Server) with a Java Virtual Machine that works with hypervisor software and provides only the set of operating system features that WebLogic Server needs to offer its full range of services.
• Arvind Jain’s Blog: WebLogic Server Virtual Edition (WLS-VE) goes GA - With a single command, WLS instances can quickly be deployed onto VMware ESX-enabled resource pools, fully integrated and tuned to run within their own dedicated virtual machines… all without any 3rd party operating systems.
• yav - Javascript form validation tool - Yav is a SIMPLE, POWERFUL and CUSTOMIZABLE javascript-based form validation tool.
• New elements in HTML 5 - HTML 5 introduces new elements to HTML for the first time since the last millennium. New structural elements include aside, figure, and section. New inline elements include time, meter, and progress. New embedding elements include video and audio.
• Download Query Express - Query Express is a simple Query Analyzer look-alike, but being small and free it can be run where the SQL Server client tools are not installed or licensed. This makes it especially useful as a query tool for MSDE and SQL Express. It also connects to Orac

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• InfoQ: System Integration Testing Using Spring - When it comes to system integration testing Spring adds real value. In this session, Rod Johnson discusses: integration testing and the support that Spring provides for it, issues around testing the persistence layer, testing web applications.
• InfoQ: BEA and Oracle incorporate Sun’s Project Tango - In a recent article, Sun’s director for SOA products, Kevin Schmidt mentioned the fact that both Oracle and BEA have incorporated Sun’s Web Services stack, Project Tango. Tango is MS .NET 3.0 interop
• InfoQ: Using Java to Crack Office 2007 - With Office 2007, no third-party libraries are necessary-a Java application can now read and write any Office 2007 document, because Office 2007 documents are now nothing more than ZIP files of XML documents known as the OpenXML
• Welcome to jXLS - jXLS is small and easy-to-use Java library for generating Excel files using XLS templates. Also jXLS can be used to read XLS files and populate Java beans with spreadsheet data according to XML configuration file
• How To Read / Write Excel Spreadsheet From Java - Both JExcelAPI and Jakarta POI (HSSF) are open source software to read & write data from / to Excel spreadsheet even on non-Microsoft platforms. In my tests HSSF came out to be the clear leader and recommended solution because of robustness and features.
• Eloquent JavaScript - Eloquent JavaScript is a hyper-book providing a comprehensive introduction to the JavaScript programming language. Apart from a bookful of text, it contains plenty of example programs, and an environment to try them out and play with them.
• http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-atompub-protocol-17.txt - The Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) is an application-level protocol for publishing and editing Web resources. The protocol is based on HTTP transfer of Atom-formatted representations. The Atom format is documented in the Atom Syndication Format.
• F1 News - Grandprix.com - One of the big problems with the ongoing Stepneygate Affair is that there is a huge amount of hearsay, but not a great deal of fact
• YUI 2.3.0: Six New Components and a Prettier Face » Yahoo! User Interface Blog - We’re pleased to announce the release of YUI version 2.3.0. This release features six new additions to the library as well as a new skinning architecture and a new visual treatment for most of our UI controls - plus 250 enhancements and bug fixes
• Greg the Architect : Episodes - Find out what happens when Greg tries to swallow three different SOA pitches in one day. Will he save the day, or will Greg have to chuck the project?
• Dr. Dobb’s | Java Message Service | July 2, 2007 - SOAP-based web-service development continues to grow, and uses XML and HTTP to remove the implementation details from remote procedure calls. But while SOAP has broken new ground in distributed computing, message-oriented middleware such as the Java Messa
• Plans for the Rich Web Application Backplane - Both mashups and Ajax are now firmly entrenched in the Web landscape. Put them together and you have the makings for Rich Web applications. This article explains the Rich Web Application Backplane, currently a W3C Note, which is designed to bring standard
• 10 things I learned about using Hibernate/JPA successfully by SpencerUresk - I decided to share a few things I learned about using Hibernate/JPA in a large project with a complicated database setup
• OpenJPA no longer requires bytecode processing - Historically, OpenJPA required that you either run a post-compilation tool or run your application with a javaagent. The latest build of OpenJPA removes this restriction by providing various levels of support for unenhanced classes.

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• Apache CXF: Interview with Dan Diephouse and Paul Brown - O’Reilly ONJava Blog - I recently had a chance to sit down with both Dan Diephouse and Paul Brown of Envoi Solutions to discuss the merger of XFire and IONA?s Celtix project into a new project, Apache CXF, currently under incubation at the Apache Software Foundation.
• Easy Ajax using Struts 2 - Kb - Struts 2 makes it easy to implement and test an Ajax Java Web application, using standard javascript frameworks such as Prototype. This wiki article gives technical notes on how to kickstart your Ajax Java development.
• Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive 12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally « - Let?s look at 12 ways Facebook can benefit the web worker, particularly those who are home-based. The more connected you are to your co-workers and clients without being intrusive, the better your working relationship.
• AJAX Magazine: YSlow Helps You Speed up your web pages - Yahoo! released an excellent performance utility on YDN called YSlow, to help you understand why your pages are slow. YSlow is a Firebug addon
• Agile Ajax: Review of GWT in Action - The book does cover many of the new features in GWT 1.4, such as Image Bundling, the new loading mechanism, and the Serializable vs IsSerializable changes. As I’ve said, overall a fine effort.
• High Performance WordPress Presentation « Barry on WordPress - The slides from the HyperDB and High Performance WordPress presentation are now online via SlideShare
• Web page to PDF Firefox extension - LOOP is a unique extension for Firefox that converts the web browser into a proper PDF writer that can do some amazing things sometime not possible in other free PDF conversion software
• Work Together: 60+ Collaborative Tools for Groups - With businesses and families spread out more and more, we?ve dug up 60+ sites that will help everyone be on the same page
• InfoQ: Presentation: Introduction to Component Based Architecture - Mark Miller delivered an introduction to Component Based Architecture. In this presention he shares tips and tricks focused on maximizing the development strength of your team
• InfoQ: Using ETags to Reduce Bandwith & Workload with Spring & Hibernate - ETags are used in conjunction with the “If-None-Match” header on a GET request to take advantage of the browser cache. Because the server generated the ETag in the first place, it can use it later to determine if the page has changed.
• InfoQ: Bridging the gap between BI & SOA - To summarize, implementing a BI solution by using EDA and SOA is superior to using traditional ETL. Not only do we get our basic BI, but we actually get better, real-time BI?not to mention improvement in the overall quality of our SOA.
• How risk management affects agile approaches | confused of calcutta - Once you switch focus from content to process, agile techniques don?t stand a chance. Agile in a ‘content’ perspective leads to the Baconian ‘A man that starts with doubts shall end in certainties’; … These two positions are polar opposites
• Json-lib 2.0 released - I’m pleased to announce that Json-lib version 2.0 has been released. JSON-lib is a java library for transforming beans, maps and XML to JSON and back again to beans and DynaBeans

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Ajax examples (XMLHttpRequest examples), code snippets and proof of concepts - the links below should help get you started on building your own functions with XMLHttpRequest and Ajax.

Loading XML into a page with xmlHttpRequest

A cool little blog post and demo that Retrieves an xml atom feed and xsl stylesheet with XMLHttpRequest().

XMLHttpRequest, REST and the Rich User Experience : Paul James

Paul James gives the basics of getting started with XMLHttpRequest and using REST for attaching the client-side to the server.

He builds an example where, upon entering a postal code and pushing a button, a form queries the server for the rest of the address information and fills in the appropriate fields when the data is returned.

Using the XML HTTP Request object

Jim Ley provides his overview of the XML HTTP request object, getting into some browser details and detection before providing some examples and getting into using XMLHTTP with google’s SOAP API.

Very Dynamic Web Interfaces - XMLHttpRequest

Drew McLellan provides an excellent overview of the basics of using XMLHttpRequest offering up a simple, well documented example used for checking if a username is available (similar to g-mail).

Client Side Validation Using the XMLHTTPRequest Object

An example of using XMLHTTP to perform real time data validation, in this example for validating data entered into a user registration form. The example focusses on Microsoft and ASP.

XMLHttpRequest Demo

Three examples of XMLHttpRequest in use: autocomplete, live search, and live action.

To Do with Ta-da List: Simple sharable to-do lists.

A free web based to-do list application provided by 37Signals, makers of Basecamp. Sign-up and try it out; XMLHttpRequest in action.

XHConn - A Simple XMLHTTP Interface

From the site: This library is meant to simplify and unify the code necessary to successfully send and receive simple data via XMLHTTP.

XMLHttpRequest API madness

Two scripts that use XMLHttpRequest: 1 - a javaScript interface to the languid.cantbedone.org API and 2 - a javaScript interface to the del.icio.us API.

Dynamic HTML and XML: The XMLHttpRequest Object

Apples page on the the XMLHttpRequest object, covering object creation, methods and properties in addition to security issues. They build an example for reading XML data, by retrieving iTunes RSS feeds that you select from a dropdown menu.

LiveSearch - Bitflux Blog Wiki

The wiki page for the livesearch function. From the page: On the client side, we use XMLHttpRequest for sending the request to the server. There we have a little PHP script, which returns a small HTML file (http://blog.bitflux.ch/livesearch.php?s=PHP ) . This is then inserted into the page with some DOM manipulation.

XMLHttpRequest and innerHTML

XMLHttpRequest is one of modern DHTML’s best kept secrets. - Haha, not anymore! Simon Willison offers up a little code that takes an HTML fragment, fetched via xmlhttp.open, and inserts it into an element with a specified id. Some good links and comments follow the article.

Google Suggest feature with ASP.NET 2.0

This article provides an ASP.NET 2.0 angle of Google Suggest along with a short little look at the history of javascript, frames, remote scripting and XmlHttp + XMLHttpRequest.

A nice overview of the history and a good breakdown how the Suggest feature works.

SAJAX - Simple Ajax / xmlHTTPRequest Toolkit for PHP

From the site: Sajax makes it easy to call PHP functions from your webpages via JavaScript without performing a browser refresh. Worth checking out and having a play with.

Amazon Zuggest

From the site: This is my take on Google Suggest only with Amazon so I’ve called it “Amazon Zuggest”. Head on over and give this a try.

Francis writes “The Javascript runs in the browser and fires every so often, looks for something to search on, it shoots a request using XMLHttp to my webserver, which in turn creates a SOAP message that gets sent to Amazon. They send back the content and it’s formatted on the server, then streamed to the browser. All in the blink of an eye.

This is a cool little app. When you are done searching, have a hover over the “History” list in the left hand column… The site comes up a little messy in Firefox…

Instant Edit

Manolo Guerrero sets up a little app that allows you to click on a form field and edit the text, which is automatically saved to the server via xmlHttpRequest. Worth a look, though the commented Javascript is in Spanish.

AJaX for weblogs

A neat little script to play with (not sure what it has to do with weblogs especially tho). From the site: It uses Javascript to get data from a remote source and then loads that into a specified target. Whatever content you like to wherever you like on the page.

AJAX Login System Demo

A proof of concept, Ajax based login script that, in this case, uses a php/mysql backend. The author provides all of the scripts involved and lists some advantages and dis-advantages of his method.

Usable XMLHttpRequest in Practice

Thomas Baekdal gets back into accessibility and Ajax. From the site: Let’s look at what we can do to turn an otherwise user-hostile XMLHttpRequest application - into a usable one…. An excellent write-up.

XHTML live Chat via XMLHttpRequest

An excellent proof of concept and something I was waiting for someone to code up ;-). This XHTML live Chat uses XMLHttpRequest to post chat messages and to periodically check the server for new messages and update your chat window.

This is simply a proof of concept, and would work really well in a blog commenting setting or for forums when those fast threads start happening.

Ripped Tickets - Live Search

Here’s an excellent application of the livesearch idea that has been seen around the web. Type in your search (a band name) and the results show up in a nice table below the search box.

Running XMLHttpRequest with Java on Google’s API

Similar to other livesearch functions out there, only this one plugs into Google’s API and has a Java backend, returning a list of results and descriptions for your query.

SproutLiner

From the site: Sproutliner is a free web service that helps you manage your projects and ideas. This tool looks to be very promising, and to be honest you have to try it out to ‘get it’. It is a sort of Ta-da list on steroids, so to speak, in that it is very simple yet a user can add to it and tailor it to their needs.

Very cool…

The Fonz uses XmlHttpRequest and AJAX to spy on you.

While makaing some excellent points in the article, the little adventure game “The Search For Fonzie’s Treasure” built using Ajax technologies is pretty cool. The author discusses user profiling as an “evil use” of Ajax. I’m not so sure that I would say that it is evil…

Backbase - Rich Internet Applications

A very impressive piece of Ajax work, with some context provided here. Have a click thru the site and try out that back-button. Also be sure to head in and check out the demo section.

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There was a lot of buzz at JavaOne regarding the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). Basically, GWT allows a developer to write a AJAX powered web application in Java!! The Java code gets ‘compiled’ to a set of plain old text files containing your JavaScript code. For example, the GWT will translate your rollover actions written in Java to JavaScript functions. This confused me for a second so I’ll stress again that you compile your web application written in Java to plain old JavaScript and HTML that can run in any browser.

What this means is that if you are a Java developer you don’t have to learn JavaScript and all the idiosyncrasies of every browser to develop a stable and reliable AJAX web application.

To get started download the GWT from Google, configure it with Eclipse, and create a new web application.

Read Full Tutorial…

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• 10 things I learned about using Hibernate/JPA successfully by SpencerUresk - I decided to share a few things I learned about using Hibernate/JPA in a large project with a complicated database setup
• OpenJPA no longer requires bytecode processing - Historically, OpenJPA required that you either run a post-compilation tool or run your application with a javaagent. The latest build of OpenJPA removes this restriction by providing various levels of support for unenhanced classes.
• Google Docs vs. the Hassle of Microsoft Office and Friends (by Jeremy Zawodny) - I’m simply not going to bother with the hassle, trouble, expense, and complexity of desktop applications when an online substitute will do the job anymore. Life’s too short already.
• Java EE 5 Blueprints (JPA) - The Java BluePrints projects presents guidelines and examples for designing enterprise quality applications and web services using Java technologies. Topics Ajax-enabled Web 2.0 applications, Persistence, JavaServer Faces, SOA with BPEL, and WS-Security.
• Agile Ajax: 36 GWT Tutorials - While the excellent GWT in Action was released last month, there are lots of people that want to get their feet wet before plunking down $50 for a book. To that end, I’ve pulled together all of the GWT tutorials I’m aware of.
• Javablog » Tips for writing FaceBook applications in Java - So you want to write a FaceBook application using Java? Here are some tips to help get you started
• How to build a breadcrumb with Spring Webflow 1.0.4 - In this tutorial we explain how to create a simple breadcrumb with the new Spring Webflow framework, arrived at 1.0.4 version, released the 26 June 2007.
• Gorilla Codes » Blog Archive » 3 Useful CSS background-image Tricks - The background-image and its related properties exemplify this school of thought, enabling many techniques that extend the boundaries of what is possible with the browser technology of today.
• Interview with James Ward: Flex from a Java Perspective - O’Reilly ONJava Blog - I recently had a chance to talk to James Ward about Adobe Flex. I started out by asking him about Cairngorm The Cairngorm Microarchitecture is a lightweight yet prescriptive framework for rich Internet application (RIA) development.
• Flex Friday Feature - Datagrid Component - The datagrid component is one of the most versatile and used UIComponents in the flex environment. After this tutorial you should have a good grasp on how to use the datagrid component and what can be done with it.
• Java Web Services, Part 3: Axis2 Data Binding - This article shows you how to use these different data bindings with Axis2 and explains why you might prefer one over the others for your application.

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• The 90th percentile: MyFaces: The emperor has no clothes - My last project is going into production in a couple of weeks, and it has been implemented using JSF. I started with JSF in good faith: it should be stable by now, it is blessed by Sun and included as the de facto web framework in JEE 5.
• James Ward’s Blog ? Blog Archive ? My Recent Flex & Apollo Adventures - A while back Bruce Eckel and I recorded a screencast of us building a Flex application with Hibernate and XFire on the backend. I finally got around to packaging the code for that demo. You can get it from SourceForge.
• rakaz - Make your pages load faster by combining and compressing javascript and css files - Thanks to a small PHP script and some clever URL rewriting I now have an easy to maintain method to speed up the loading of pages that use many or large css and javascript files.
• Vitamin Features ? Serving JavaScript Fast - The next generation of web apps make heavy use of JavaScript and CSS. We?ll show you how to make those apps responsive and quick.
• lightWindow - Another decent lightbox Javascript library (via Ajaxian) - After researching every single modal window, lightbox, slimbox, etc out there nothing fit the bill. Granted some of them were very nice but only fit a specific purpose
• Dynamic languages: More than just a quick fix | InfoWorld | Analysis | 2007-04-16 | By Andrew Binstock - IT’s rise to prominence as a core competence that delivers competitive advantage has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in the number of software development projects it must complete
• Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Rails Developer David Heinemeier Hansson?s Response to Alex Payne?s Interview [dive into mark] - LAUGH OUT LOUD funny take from Mark Pilgrim, John Gruber style.
• Wordpress Performance: Why My Site Is So Much Faster Than Yours by Elliott Back - There?s no good reason for Wordpress or your site to be slow, except your own negligence. Cache everything. Monitor performance
• Tim Sneath : Introducing Microsoft Silverlight - Silverlight (previously codenamed “WPF/E”) is a lightweight subset of XAML for building rich media experiences on the web.
• Java Community News - BEA Releases JRockit R27.2 with Java 6 Support - BEA’s latest JVM release, JRockit R27.2, is the first implementation of the Java 6 VM. In addition to providing full Java 6 support, the latest JRockit VM includes many-fold performance improvements, especially for applications with short-lived objects.
• Enomalism : XEN Virtualized Server Management Console: Amazon EC2 Migration - The Enomalism Elastic migration module is a migration tool kit for the management and migration of virtual images between your local xen based enomalism environment and the remote Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Environment.
• Everybody Hates Don Imus - Frank Rich’s brilliant column - Even in that short span, there?s been an astounding display of hypocrisy, sanctimony and self-congratulation from nearly every side of the debate
• Dev2Dev Online: Open Source and BEA - BEA believes in open source. We believe a blended strategy for application development and deployment?combining the best of open source and commercial software?provides important freedom and flexibility not available through all-or-nothing approaches
• Web Worker Daily ? Blog Archive Web Worker Emergency Survival Kit ? - Over the years, I?ve accumulated a variety of tools that don?t take up much space but that come in handy when an emergency comes along. On the average day, I don?t need any of these - but when I do, I?m happy to have them. Here are my suggestions

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Most know about Google’s I’m Feeling Lucky feature, you enter a search term, and it automatically takes you to the first result. Yahoo has no such feature, but were going to make one. Yahoo’s great set of API’s, and the JSON PHP class makes this simple. We’re going to use the Yahoo! API for search requests and then decode the response with JSON, and redirect from there.

To begin, make sure you have a copy of the JSON class (linked above). Now, making the API request is simple, we form a URL and then get the contents. The content will be sent to JSON to be decoded, then sent back to use as a large array (and sub-arrays) and we’ll get the URL from there.

The request URL will look like this:

$request = ‘http://api.search.yahoo.com/WebSearchService/V1/webSearch?appid=SC&query=’. $_POST[‘query’] .‘&results=1&output=json’;

This sends a request to the web search service API with our posted query. (we also say to output and JSON and limit to 1 response) Next, we have to get the contents of the request and then load up JSON and decode:

$response = file_get_contents($request);
require_once(‘./json.class.php’);
$json = new Services_JSON();
$data = $json->decode($response);

Still simple. We get the contents of the request (which is just a jumble right now ) then require, start, and use the JSON class to decode our response. The data variable now contains a huge array, it’s interesting to see what happens if your print_r() it. If you do that, you might want to try to find the URL variable yourself, but if not, keep reading and I’ll show you.

$redirect = $data->ResultSet->Result[0]->Url;
header(“Location: $redirect”);

Really, it’s that simple. The URL has three parents, the actual result which contains the URL and other data about that particular result, the result set which is all the results, and the array itself.

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The service last.fm offers is pretty cool, you register, and it automatically records data about your music, and puts that data on their website. From there, you can find others who have the same taste as you or find artists similar to the ones you like. Audioscrobbler, which powers last.fm, offers an API, which makes it easy to get the latest tracks, artists, albums, and more. This data is offered in a variety of formats, text, XML, and XSPF (rarely). We’re going to be using plain text, as it’s easiest to manipulate. For a listing of all the API services, see here. We’re going to be using the API to display our last listened to track.

We will be using the API for latest tracks in combination with the GD functions to create a dynamic image with our latest song. The API is simple, we have a url which will look like: http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/USERNAME/recenttracks.txt and that contains the latest tracks for that user. The first part of our script will handle the API part:

<?php
header(“Content-type: image/png”);
$user = “RJ”;
$url = “http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/$user/recenttracks.txt”;
$data = file($url);
$song = explode(“,”, $data[0]);
$song = explode(“-”, $song[1]);

The first part tells the browser that we will be sending out an image (png in our case), the next few lines make the request to the API, and then gets the latest song’s artist and title in an array ($song). The next part of the script will deal with creating, writing, and outputting our image. This is a little more confusing, just becuase the image functions often are.

$img = imagecreate(225, 30);
$bg = imagecolorallocate($img, 255, 255, 255);
$text = imagecolorallocate($img, 0, 0, 0);
imagestring($img, 2, 5, 5, trim($song[1]), $text);
imagepng($img);
imagedestroy($img);
?>

This creates a new image with the dimensions 225 by 30, makes white the background color, black the text color, writes our song and artist, then outputs it to the browser. The 2, 5, 5 are the font size, x position, and y position.

The final image is really simple, but it’s still cool. It’s easy to change the background color to fit the page it will be on, just get the RGB values and put them in for the $bg variable.
Enjoy!

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