[JAVAONE] User Interface Design
Someone whose oppinion I listen to, Karsten Lentzch, recommends these books about user interface design:
Background: I went to a couple of presentations by Karsten Lentzch at JavaOne. He is the author of an impressive Java/Swing user interface library, called JGoodies. I've been using his stuff in BlogBridge from almost the very start so it was good to meet him face to face.
In fact it was basically a go-no go question for me on using Java for BlogBridge: "Can a beautiful user interface be built with Java?" In the end, I discovered JGoodies and decided that it was possible, and so decided to go with Java.
[GEEK/JAVAONE] Java Web Start – still falling short
Java Web Start is a piece of Java platform that's meant to ease the deployment and updating of Java applications. It's a great idea, but disappointingly implemented. There were several JavaOne sessions about Web Start.
There are some great enhancements coming in Java 5.0 (1.5)
A semi-miraculous JAR compression technology (called Pack200, who knows why) which in some cases achieves a claimed 10-1 compression. You need to know that Java applications are notoriously huge because and so this is welcome news.
Beyond this, there are a set of features allowing more control of the placement of shortcuts, onto the desktop, in the start menu, and various other items.
However, disappointingly, I have to say that they still don't get it. If Java wants to support the creation of no-compromise user experiences on the desktop more is needed:
there is insufficient control of shortcut placement
there still is no crossplataform, cross browser, automatic download of the required run time libraries (JRE)
And worse, when asked when these and other deficiencies would get corrected the speaker said something along the lines of: "oh those are good ideas that we are talking about. We'll consider it for the next release."
With 1.5 to 2.5 year release cycle this is not really good enough
[JAVAONE] Scott McNealy Keynote
I had never heard him speak - He's a lot of fun to listen to - funny and with a sense of his audience. This was a shorter keynote then yesterday. This wasn't the kind of rah-rah motivational speech that I was expecting. He did drive home a few points, clearly showing what he was most interested in us taking away:
Takeaway 1: Scott wants us to believe that Sun is highly viable. They will not be going away. $4 Billion in the bank, etc. Unit sales are growing - at least over the last 3 Quarters.
Takeaway 2: Scott wants us to know that Sun’s support of Java is unwavering. It is very expensive but it does help them to sell hardware. Sun is very keen on supporting the Java community and to ensure that no-one wonders whether Java is really behind us.
As he known for, Scott then launched into his 'rants' although they really were really quite tame. Here is what he is _' outraged' _over:
Where 's the outrage on the proposal that companies be forced to expence stock options? [I don't know - I don't understand the issues well enough but if Warren Buffet thinks its a good idea to force companies to treat the value of stock options as expenses, then it can't be that outragous.]
Where 's the outrage on viruses? [The angle here of course is that supposedly viruses only affect Microsoft systems, Java based systems. Even if this where true, I am not sure it says anything, given the disparity of the installed bases.]
Where 's the outrage on IBM pressuring Sun to Open Source Java? After all Sun has historically submitted more to Open Source than any other company – let them open source their own stuff. [Hmm, what about Eclipse?]
Some factoids:
600 million Java smartcards shipped
650 million PCs shipped with J2SE
"Who else has done smart card to mars rover compatibility” (which is a pretty impressive statement, except, why would you want that?)
Is the world ready for a replacement to Outlook?
Everyone loves to beat up on Microsoft's Outlook. Including me! See Outlook Haters Anyone? and Outlook 2003 Rant.
It is true that Outlook is a bit of an abomination. It's large, slow, and as of the latest release, the user interface has gotten that much worse.
Even Microsoft execs agree according to Rafe Needleman (see link above): "I confront Microsoft execs about these and other Outlook crimes whenever I get a chance. The result is usually a rolling of eyes ; the Microsofties know they have a problem child on their hands, but due in part to internal politics, it's a very hard product to fix. "
Still it is also true that everyone on the planet practically uses Outlook. I don't know the numbers but I bet it accounts for over 70% of the email clients out there. Is there any point to trying to unseat it?
I am spending a few days with the Java faithful at JavaOne, getting a dose of how the other half lives. The faithful hate everything Microsoft (which I do not - I like Microsoft, sometimes begrugingly, sometimes bitterly, but I like them.) They use Eudora, Mozilla and a few other apps.
But you know what Outlook has that none of those have? And this is the reason why I continue to use Outlook? It has great integration between your contact list, email, and calendar. Having a single master list of contacts used across the board is really important. (The other thing that Outlook has, which right now is not a benefit to me, but is super important is group calendaring and meeting scheduling.)
So why is there no other email application out there (is there?) which does this integration? No major one anyway?
Enter **Mitch Kapor 's Chandler project **(I shudder to call it "Mitch Kapor's" because there are lots of other people involved, but that's what everyone calls it.) They are trying to build just such a grand integration, inspired at some level by that long ago, seminal application, Agenda.
I wonder if the deeper Microsoft digs itself with Outlook , the more of a chance Chandler and others will have?
[JAVAONE] JavaOne Keynote
As you know I am attending the JavaOne conference. I jotted down my key takeaways during the keynote for myself, which I thought I’d share here. The keynote featured several Sun execs, particularly Jonathan Schwarts, their President and COO.
Take Away 1: Java as a platform is incredibly ubiquitous. This argument rests on the premise that the world is a lot more than personal computers, and very importantly includes mobile devices like cell phones and PDAs. In trying to put this in to numbers, they seem to try to take credit in counting the number of network elements of all kinds of things which I don’t think of as Java (RF-ID tags are not really Java are they? Is eBay Java? I don’t think of ring tones as Java.)
Take Away 2: There’s a renewed focus on the desktop. With this new focus, I think Sun is admitting that in the past Java was not known as suitable for desktop apps. And of course this point contradicts the preceding one to some extent. Java Studio Creator is their VB killer. But the demo was confusing because it looked more like a drag and drop web based development tool. The business that this is for non-programmers is not especially believable, but this is not different from MSFT
Take Away 3: Sun talks a lot about monetizing Java , about the size of the opportunity for developers. Sun claims that the Java economy is $100B. Not sure how they get to that number My questions is how will Sun itself make money here? I asked some people, and the answer I got was “Sell hardware, sell Java cards.” Somehow I am not persuaded. Why are they doing so poorly?
[JAVAONE] Visiting the Java tribe
I am here at JavaOne and living among a very different crowd than I’ve been in lately. It’s the gathering of the Java faithful, and there’s a different feel here compared with the world I come from, the Windows/Microsoft world. Here are some of my field notes and random impressions.
The keyboards on Sun computers have different spacings and I keep making mistakes in typing. The mouse has two buttons and no wheel. But the right button does something different from what I am used to. And boy, just taking a screen shot of something, some process crashed and dumped on my screen. (The computer didn't crash, just the process…)
…more later
[JAVAONE] What’s going on with Java version numbers?
What’s going on with Java version numbers?
There was Java 2 (where the version numbers were 1.3 and 1.4) and the Tiger release just coming out is 1.5. The release after Tiger is going to be called 5.0?!
What is going on? Talk about sowing confusion. Not that marketing ever was a Sun strength!
What’s a blog anyway?
I am away from home, at my home in Curacao for a reunion of Salas folks from around the world. I saw an childhood friend of mine, Raul, who asked me 'So what's a blog, anyway'? I was taken aback, because, what would Raul be doing, reading my blog, and especially with the rather 'odd' image that I left as the top entry before I headed down here?
So, this is just a reminder of what I already knew, of course, that anyone around the world can read this. And secondly, that anyone with the name Salas might be tempted to see what's to be seen on www.salas.com, so be careful what shows up on the front page!
A blog is a contraction of the word "Web Log", as in web diary or web journal. A blog is a web page where a single person writes whatever they choose to write on some kind of regular basis, for whatever reason makes sense to them. Who reads blogs? Who knows? It's hard to know. Why? Because for one reason or another there's an interest in what's being written.
There are a few blogs (relatively) which are really amazingly interesting and have information and news which are otherwise impossible to find. That's why I read them. (I probably wouldn't read www.salas.com if I wasn't writing it, if that makes any sense 🙂
As an illustration, and if you are still reading this entry, I am going to guess that you might be interested in what's going on in Venezuela. I live in the USA and I don't read Spanish. I get my up to date news about Venezuela from "The Devils Excrement" which is a blog written by someone who seems to live in Venezuela.
The odd thing with blogs is that I don't know who writes The Devils Excrement and what their bias is or is not. (I don't even have any proof that they live in Venezuela.) But when I am able to correlate what they write with other sources I do get the sense that it's accurate. But for all I know it's 100% pure propaganda. So you do have to be a careful consumer of this stuff.
Balls
Sorry to make my Blog x-rated, but this picture was just too much 🙂
"
A visitor looks at Rasputin 's [deleted] displayed at the first Russian museum of erotica in St. Petersburg. The museum was founded by Igor Knyazkin, the chief of the prostate research center of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.(AFP/Interpress/Alexander Drozdov)". Via Yahoo News.
BlogBridge Beta, part deux
I shoulda known…
There's cross-platform and then there's cross-platform.
A week later, about 20 testers later, we've done 2 more sub-releases (up to 0.5.2 now) to shake out various platformy problems. It's one thing to get it to run and another thing to get it to run right.
**Java WebStart:No picnic! ** While the promise is great, it doesn't live up to it. And to think that this has been a feature of Java for years and years (I think 4) and it still is full of problems. Still the notion that in one fell swoop we get intallation and on-the-fly updating is pretty powerful, so we'll just keep on struggling with it.
Threads aint Threads One area of Java where cross-platform is not so cross is in Threads. When it comes to the intricate timing, interaction, and detailed ordering of things, Threads on Windows can be totally different from Threads on Linux. The effect? A solid performer on one platform turns into a deadlock on the other. Fix the bug on the other and the one breaks. Fun.
Anyway, live and learn. I am still a believer! I think we can consider the first early beta up and running, so we are returning to our cave to work on features. As usual, if you want to be a beta tester, please send email to beta@blogbridge.com and we'll see if we can fit you in.