James Weaver on Quantum Computing and Java

Music Explorer FX *Mobile Edition* by Sten Anderson

Sten Anderson, winner of the Sun JavaFX Coding Challenge with his Music Explorer FX app, has just released a version for JavaFX Mobile.  Sten donated the source code to the JFXtras project, and has provided a write-up in his blog which includes a Java Web Start link.

Music Explorer FX Mobile Edition is a great resource/reference for creating JavaFX Mobile apps, so check it out!

Enjoy, and thanks Sten,

Jim Weaver

The RIA Exemplar Challenge Mötley Judging Crüe

Note: the deadline for the JavaFXpert RIA Exemplar Challenge has been extended to April 10, 2010. Please see this post for details.

In the JavaFXpert RIA Exemplar Challenge announcement, I stated that the graphic design judge would be chosen and disclosed soon.  I am pleased to say that there will actually be two very high-caliber graphic design judges for this contest: Jasper Potts and Romain Guy.  As if these guys needed an introduction:

Jasper Potts is a developer on the JavaFX & Swing teams at Sun Microsystems, and lives in Bath, UK. He is currently working on the new JavaFX UI controls and graphics frameworks, and was the bloke that created the JavaFX Charts API.  Jasper, and Richard Bair, have an excellent JavaFX blog at fxexperience.com, where Jasper has already begun providing tips for the RIA Exemplar Challenge participants.

Romain Guy is the co-author of the ground-breaking Filthy Rich Clients book, and is a user interface toolkit engineer at Google on the Android project. Romain lives in San Francisco, California, and has a blog named Curious Creature that contains some stunning photographs, very recently of the Colorado River at sunset.  He also has a "French, goofier version of Curious Creature" named #ProgX.

Stephen Chin, a Pro JavaFX book co-author, is going to help me judge the RIA Exemplar Challenge entries from a developer perspective.  Stephen is the leader (with Keith Combs), of the WidgetFX and JFXtras projects.  Stephen is very active in the leadership of the JavaFX community, having recently founded the Silicon Valley JavaFX User Group, and has a JavaFX/Java blog at steveonjava.com.

All three are internationally recognized experts and speakers, and I am very pleased to have them help me judge the RIA Exemplar Challenge.  Please be sure and enter the challenge!

Regards,

Jim Weaver

Announcing the JavaFXpert RIA Exemplar Challenge

Note: the deadline for the JavaFXpert RIA Exemplar Challenge has been extended to 30 days after the JavaFX 1.3 SDK has been released. See this post for the rationale.

I posed the question "Should There be Enterprise RIA Style Guidelines?" in late 2008, and received some valuable feedback/discussion.  Based upon that feedback, I'm replacing my question with the following challenge:

"Create an application in JavaFX that exemplifies the appearance and behavior of a next-generation enterprise RIA (rich internet application)".

Here are the rules to this JavaFXpert RIA Exemplar Challenge:

1) Each application must be created with the JavaFX 1.3 SDK.

2) The code must be offered as open source, in the form of the updated Berkeley Software Distribution License.  The code for the winning entry will be added to the open source JFXtras project samples library.

3) The entries must be submitted in the form of a NetBeans or an Eclipse project within 30 days after the JavaFX 1.3 SDK has been released, to ria-exemplar-challenge@javafxpert.com.  The entries will be judged by two JavaFX developers (Jim Weaver and Stephen Chin), and two graphics designers (Jasper Potts and Romain Guy).  The criteria for judging will be how well we feel that the entry "exemplifies the appearance and behavior of a next-generation enterprise RIA".

4) The winning entry will be announced within three weeks after the deadline on this JavaFXpert.com blog.

5) The prize is a cash award of USD 2000, and will be awarded after the winner is announced.

6) This contest uses the same age and country of residence criteria that Sun did in their JavaFX Coding Challenge. See this excerpt from the following web page http://javafx.com/challenge/faq.jsp

"All Entrants must be of majority legal age in their country and a legal resident of one of the following countries; Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Egypt, a European Union member state, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Malaysia, Panama, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Thailand, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, United States, and Venezuela."

If you have any questions about this contest, please leave a comment on this blog post.

Thanks, and have fun with the contest!

Jim Weaver
JavaFXpert.com

You had me at Least Common Multiple :-)

One of the student winners of the the JavaFX Coding Challenge is Kazuki Hamasaki, who created the CalcFX program.  CalcFX is a deceptively functional (and incredibly useful) calculator, and is now one of the Java Web Start shortcuts on my desktop.

Kazuki: If you're reading this, please create a desktop icon for CalcFX so that it doesn't blend in with the usual coffee-cup icons deposited by Java Web Start.  For those wondering, just put the following line subordinate to the information element of the JNLP file:

<icon href="some_icon.png" width="64" height="64"/>

Congrats, and nice work, Kazuki!

Jim Weaver