I put out an April Fools’ post yesterday about joining NASA to help with exploration of the big red planet.  That post was not far from the truth…  all the details about technologies developed by NASA were 100% accurate.  Heck, even the fact that I quit my job was the truth!  The only part that was not true was the company that I will be joining.

While working for NASA to help explore Mars would be a very cool gig as well, I am joining another big red entity that you might be familiar with…

I was initially skeptical about joining Oracle, but have been won over by their commitment to moving forward the Java platform that they have demonstrated over the past 2 years.  For example:

Oracle released Java 7 on schedule in only 1 year

This is something that Sun had been unable to accomplish in the 3 years preceding the merger, and had historically struggled with.

Hudson and OpenOffice have been freed

While the community outcry around the Jenkins and LibreOffice project splits made all the headlines, the ensuing freeing of these platforms by Oracle in which they donated the code to the Eclipse and Apache Foundations, respectively, was not nearly as well publicized.

Oracle saved JavaFX 2

Sun lost touch with their developer base, and built a platform that was inaccessible to Java developers and didn’t meet the needs of business client applications.  Oracle turned this around by rewriting all the APIs in pure Java, adding a much-needed focus on desktop business applications, and shipped JavaFX 2.0 on time!

For these reasons and more, I am glad to have the opportunity to continue to drive Java forward from the inside out.  In fact, not only am I going to be joining Oracle’s Java evangelism team, but at the same time they also recruited Jim Weaver, my friend and co-author on the Pro JavaFX 2 Platform title.  So what can we infer from the hiring of two JavaFX gurus like Jim and myself?

For one, JavaFX is here to stay as a part of the Java platform.

With the 2.0 release, JavaFX finally has the performance, Java language support, and business focused controls to be a worthy successor to Swing.  This is good news to those companies who have a heavy investment in Swing, because they have a path forward to continue developing mission critical business applications on the highly robust JVM platform.  Also, with the new JFXPane component that allows embedding of JavaFX applications in Swing, it is easy to begin incorporating JavaFX elements in existing web applications.

Also, JavaFX has the potential to be a driving force in cross-platform mobile application development.

Right now you have to choose between with the limited functionality, poor usability, and device incompatibility of web-based cross-platform frameworks or the high cost of writing multiple native applications.  I had high hopes that Flash would fulfill the gap between these two approaches, but Adobe fumbled he ball.  Fortunately, JavaFX has shown great promise in this area with some impressive technology demos at JavaOne, and has the opportunity for a touchdown with a business-focused release of JavaFX 2 on mobile.

I am optimistic about the future of Java and JavaFX technology in the coming years, and in my new role will be in a good position to give all of you a front row seat.  Expect plenty of blogs, articles, demos, and the usual satiric, but realistic, developer viewpoint on the Java platform as I dig my heels in at the big red giant!

This was an April Fools’ spoof — everything is factual except the company I joined.  Read more here.

Just in the past year I lead the OSCON Java conference, wrote a new book on Android Flash, and also put out an update to Pro JavaFX 2.  A lot of rumors have been flying around about what the next big thing for me will be, especially since I just quit my job this past week!  Well, time to put the speculation to rest and announce my new gig at the NASA Ames Research Center.

“…time to put the speculation to rest and announce my new gig at the NASA Ames Research Center.”

NASA actually already has quite a bit of Java in use internally at NASA today.  You may not know that the command and control systems for many of the mars rovers, including the Spirit and Opportunity, use Java technology to send instructions to the remote robots as well as analyze the data coming back and construct 3D views for the navigation software used in the control center. After 8 years on the planet, the Opportunity is still going strong, collecting data on Mars craters and seasons, and bringing back priceless images from the red planet.

NASA is so reliant on Java technology that they are also active contributors to the open-source community.  The newer K-9 rover has even more use of Java technology, for which they developed a tool called Java PathFinder in order to identify and eliminate software errors. This is actually an open-source project that you can use in your own application development to trace through different bytecode paths and identify and debug potential deadlocks or exceptions. One of the main features is the ability to deliver not just a stack trace where the error occurred, but the entire execution path that lead to that error.

Recent advances in Java make it a great platform for doing the sort of mission-critical work that NASA needs.  Embedded Java offers a compact, reliable platform for building Java applications on a variety of hardware platforms that are efficient and robust enough to be used in unfavorable conditions such as space and planetary exploration.  The Java EE platform is the industry standard for server technology, and provides a number of reliable, fault-tolerant communication transports that can speed up and data transmission and analysis for researchers worldwide.  And the part I am most excited about is JavaFX technology, which is a modern UI toolkit for developing rich client applications that can incorporate business controls, data charting, media playback, and even 3D.

“JavaFX … is a modern UI toolkit for developing rich client applications that can incorporate business controls, data charting, media playback, and even 3D.”

So you might be wondering why NASA has so much investment in Java and not web technologies like HTML5 and Javascript…  Well, let’s imagine an alternate world where Javascript and web applications were the way we did space exploration:

Swigert: ‘Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.’
Houston: ‘This is Houston. Say again please.’
Lovell: ‘Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a 404 error.’

“Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a 404 error.”

Needless to say, I am glad to be working on Java, and taking it to new heights at NASA!

OSCON Java is a new conference that I am helping to kick off as co-chair this July.  While there are plenty of conferences out there that you could attend, I am confident that this is the one you won’t want to miss.

To celebrate the Java 7 release, I put together 7 reasons why you should attend OSCON Java.  Also, make sure to use the 20% discount code of “OS11COM” when you register:

1. Come Celebrate the First New Java Release in Half a Decade!

The last major release of Java was Java 6, which came out 5 years ago on December 11, 2006. After only a year of the Sun acquisition, Oracle has already made a major Java release happen with another scheduled in a year’s time.

We have broad coverage of the Java 7 release with a keynote and technical session by Joe Darcy, and technical sessions on OpenJDK and Coin by Dalibor Topic and Stuart Marks. I have been pretty impressed with Stuart’s coverage of topics from a developer’s perspective and am looking forward to his talk myself.

2. Because Google Matters

Regardless of what you think about the Android lawsuit, I think the biggest detriment has been the lack of good content on Google technologies at Java conferences. We are an independent conference, so it allows us to bring content that you would otherwise not find, such as an exclusive keynote from Joshua Bloch and several mobile Android sessions to help you leverage your Java skills on modern devices.

3. You Think JVM Languages are Cool

It has been said that the crown jewel of the Java platform is the JVM, not the language. Java 7 has further solidified this with better support for dynamic languages. Come find out what is the latest and greatest on the alternative language front with a keynote and some meaty sessions from Martin Odersky, deep technical sessions on Groovy, Clojure, Scala, and other languages, and some bytecode hacking with Charles Nutter.

4. And You Wouldn’t Mind Hanging out with JVM language Authors for a Day…

On the Sunday before OSCON we are organizing a free JVM Languages Symposium that many of the speakers will be attending.  This is a great opportunity to hang out with JVM language authors and the movers and shakers in the industry in an informal unconference atmosphere.  Events like this are what I believe sets apart community-driven conferences from large corporate events, and provide a lot more value to the attendees than simply one-way content.  If you happen to be in the Portland area, you can drop by for this free event with no obligation to stay for OSCON.

5. Your Boss Won’t Let You Fly to Belgium

I travel to speak at different conferences around the world and I would have to say that the golden standard for Java conferences is Devoxx. They have an amazing venue — it is great to see your slides on a huge movie screen, and relaxing for attendees to take it in from nice, plush seats. They attract an international audience… not only Belgium, but Italy, France, Germany, and citizens of many of the other surrounding countries consider Devoxx their home conference. Even though Devoxx is a wildly successful conference, they still have a small-conference feel, run by a very tight knit conference committee that acts more like a user group than an organization. This makes the entire conference experience much more personalized.

OSCON Java has a lot of similarities with Devoxx. It has a small, enthusiastic program committee with folks who really care about Java technologies. We are also following the Devoxx model of recording and posting talks online afterwards, so even if you miss a great talk because you are in the room next door, you can always watch it online later. Finally, since we are an independent conference, you get the full experience of Java, Android, and other technologies that you would otherwise have to go to multiple conferences to see.

6. OSCON is a Pretty Sweet Conference as Well…

The O’Reilly OSCON conference has been underrepresented in the Java community, but is a pretty huge event in its own right.  They have some amazing content around emerging languages and mobile platforms.  Plus, you can get OSCON, OSCON Java, and OSCON Data all wrapped up in one neat package with the OSCON Superpass.

7. There is Only One Inaugural Year!

This is our first year putting on OSCON Java, so we are pulling out all the stops with the best speakers, tutorials, content, and events.  You will have a unique opportunity to participate in the creation of a new Java tradition, and a decade from now can brag to your friends about being a founding attendee of the biggest open-source Java conference in the world.

It is pretty easy to get lost in the media hype around the Java events of the past year.  If you follow the headlines, you might believe that all the Java talent left Oracle in a mass exodus, Larry hates open source, or Java is turning into the next COBOL.  Regardless of the factual correctness of these headlines, the Java ecosystem is about more than a single company or set of individuals.  Java has the largest open-source community of any language in existence!

So how big is Java and open-source?  Here is an informal search poll of some of the most popular open-source project hosting providers:

The data for this chart comes from the top six open-source hosting providers using Google Search as a metric for gauging activity level for each of the platforms.  As you can see, Java is still the most active open-source platform in the world, followed closely by PHP and Python.  While not an indicator of language popularity, Bill Gates has gone on record speaking out against open source, so the poor representation from the C# community is not surprising.

This takes us to OSCON Java, which is a new conference I am helping to kick off as conference co-chair together with Laurel Ruma.  It is colocated with OSCON in Portland, Oregon, but is exclusively focused on Java and open source.  O’Reilly is the conference organizer, but they are very neutral when it comes to corporations and technologies.  This allows us to reach out to a wide variety of Java technology players including Apache, Google, Adobe, Oracle, the JCP, and many others.

We have big plans for the OSCON Java keynotes, technical content, and exhibitors.  Also, we are working on making this a model conference from the get-go based on my experience attending and speaking at premier conference venues across the world.  Expect a huge focus on community outreach, a lot of interaction between speakers and attendees, and a particular focus on the JVM languages of tomorrow.

If you are interested in participating as a speaker, it is still not too late to submit a talk.  The CFP ends on March 28th (4 days!), so you still have time to submit a last minute talk:

http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/cfp/159

If you have a great idea, but can’t get your talk together in time or miss the deadline by a few days, shoot me an e-mail via the contact form on my blog.

I look forward to seeing you at OSCON Java, uniting the Java open-source community towards a brighter future!

I am pleased to announce the Flash On… user group that I am kicking off together with Keith Sutton, Oswald Campesato, and Justin Webb.  The focus is Flash on consumer devices from Mobile to Tablet to TV.

Oswald and I will be doing the inaugural presentation on Flash mobile technologies this evening.  You can catch the live stream on Adobe Connect here:

http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/flashondevices/
(Stream starts at 7PM PST!)

For those of you who haven’t been following the Flash Mobile headlines, there have been a lot of great announcements that make this platform worth developing for:

Mobile

• With the AIR 2.5 release, Android devices are fully supported
• Apple has relaxed their license to allow Flash-based applications in the App Store
• Similar announcements have come from other vendors such as Palm, Windows 7, and others

TV

• Google TV prominently features Flash support
• Adobe also announced AIR support for Samsung devices such as Smart TVs and Blu-ray Players

Tablet

• Blackberry announced Adobe AIR support for their Playbook Tablet

Here is an excerpt from the Adobe Max 2010 keynote that shows off the Blackberry Playbook Tablet running Flash:

When put together, Flash is well poised to become the defacto standard for building rich user experiences across different screens.

We will cover all this and more in our presentation tonight.  As usual, we will have high production values for the talk with side-by-side presenter video and slides plus a chat area to ask questions.  I hope to see you there!

I am pleased to announce the Visage Language, a domain specific language (DSL) for writing user interfaces.

http://visage-lang.org/

User interface developers have long been neglected and forced to deal with languages and tooling that are a poor fit for their craft.  At times they are asked to write user interfaces in languages originally meant for server-side applications such as C and Java.  In other instances they are required to use a markup language originally meant for representing documents or structured data such as HTML and XML.  These are fine technologies for the applications in which they were originally intended, but a weak substitute for declaring and representing user interfaces.

The goal of Visage is to provide a common language for user interface developers that provides the following benefits:

1. Model the UI – The code should look like the user interface with a similar structure to how the resulting application will appear.
2. Data Binding – All user interfaces have a backend model, so it should be easy and painless to hook this up to the UI with bidirectional integration.
3. Resilient Behavior – The last thing you want to see during a customer demo of your new application is a NullPointerException.  Language constructs should have deterministic, but fault tolerant behavior in all cases.
4. Rapid Development – Application development should allow rapid, iterative cycles with early feedback starting right at the compilation phase.

The way in which Visage satisfies these requirements is summarized in the following table:

So what does a Visage application look like?  Here is Hello World in the Visage language:

Stage {
  title: "Hello World"
  Scene {
    Text {
      "Hello World"
    }
  }
}

This code should look familiar to readers of my blog.  It is based on the JavaFX Script language with a few (proposed) syntactic additions.

For those of you who don’t know the history of JavaFX Script, it was originally designed by Christopher Oliver and called F3 for Form Follows Function.  With the acquisition of SeeBeyond by Sun, this technology became the cornerstone of JavaFX and was open sourced in 2007 at JavaOne.  Oracle purchased Sun and just this past week at JavaOne 2010 announced that they are going to continue with the JavaFX Platform, but replace the JavaFX Script language with Java APIs.  We are adopting the JavaFX Compiler for use in the Visage project, and plan to continue evolving it.

Here are some of the goals of the Visage project:

• Provide a JavaFX Java API Binding – One of the most innovative parts of the JavaFX platform was the language, and it is what all JavaFX applications are written in today.  Our number 1 project goal is to make sure that developers can continue to write declarative code and easily port over their existing applications.
• Enhance the Visage Language – The language syntax remains largely unchanged since the 1.0 release of JavaFX.  We plan on making numerous improvements that will be beneficial to UI programmers and make common patterns easier to code.
• Support for Other Platforms – For the Visage language to thrive, it has to be a general purpose UI programming language.  Some other platforms that are in great need of a UI DSL include HTML5, Flex, and Android.
• Language Standardization – We would like to see the Visage language be made an official standard with possibly multiple implementations.

If you are interested in following the project or helping out, please join the Google Groups:

http://groups.google.com/group/visage-users

http://groups.google.com/group/visage-dev

There were some huge announcements at JavaOne today for the JavaFX platform.  Overall I think the announcements show some very positive momentum for the future of JavaFX and rich client Java, but there were some casualties…

In this blog I will cover the salient bits, but if you would like an opportunity to hear it directly from the JavaFX leadership team in a free event, we will be hosting a JavaFX 2.0 event with Richard Bair and Jai Suri at our next SvJugFX meeting.  As usual, the event will be streamed live, and questions can be asked remotely via Google Moderator.

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The Good Parts:

Java and Alternative JVM Languages

JavaFX has a new API face.  All the JavaFX 2.0 APIs will be exposed via Java classes that will make it much easier to integrate Java server and client code.  This also opens up some huge possibilities for JVM language integration with JavaFX that Jonathan Giles and I explored in our JavaOne talk today.  We did a whirlwind tour through four different JVM languages (Ruby, Clojure, Groovy, and Scala) showing what JavaFX 2.0 code may look like when ported to these different languages.

Here is the full presentation deck:

Which can also be downloaded as a PDF.

Open Source Controls

Thomas Kurian announced a strategy to open source the JavaFX controls going forward.  This is a huge move in the right direction for the platform, and will make life for us third-party control developers much better!  Even though this is not the full platform open sourcing that I have been petitioning for (thanks for all your support!!!), I will still take some of the credit. 

JavaFX 2.0 Proposed Roadmap

Oracle has published a proposed roadmap for JavaFX 2.0 in the 2011 timeframe.  There are some really great things included, many of which I have been campaigning for:

• Multithreading Improvements – The move to Java APIs breaks down some of the barriers to multi-threaded programming that were present with JavaFX.  Presumably a similar model to Swing will exist where you can launch worker threads, but still have to do all UI operations on a main event thread.
• Texture Paint – Interesting to see this highlighted, but its use in JavaFX was pioneered by Jeff Friesen and included in JFXtras 0.7.
• Grid Layout Container + CSS – Very good to see that they are taking the Grid Layout and evolving it.  The addition of making it accessible from CSS will make it an extremely powerful layout container suitable for multiple uses.
• HD Media – Media seems to be getting a big upgrade, which has been long overdue.  This is in addition to other promised improvements in full screen capabilities, media markers, animation synchronization, and low latency audio.
• HTML5 WebView – It is good to see that this is finally getting the attention it deserves.  JavaFX is great for dynamic application development, but is not well suited for content presentation.  The combination of JavaFX + HTML5 will greatly expand the range of applications that can be developed.
• Controls Galore! – TableView, SplitView, TabView, and Rich Text to name a few.  This is a necessity to build robust enterprise applications.
• File (and other) Dialogs – This may seem like a minor point, but is incredibly important for building real applications.

HTML5 Support

Not to be confused with the WebView, there is also a plan for the successor to JavaFX 2.0 (2012 timeframe) to support an alternate HTML5 rendering pipeline.  Not many details are available about this yet, but it could be a huge technological breakthrough if they are able to pull it off successfully.  The practical applications of being able to deploy your JavaFX application to any HTML5 compliant device is enormous.

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The Casualties:

JavaFX Script

JavaFX Script was good to us, but it is no longer a go forward technology for Oracle.  I am a bit disappointed about this move, because it takes away a lot of the productivity benefits that have made JavaFX code a joy to write.  However, many of the promised improvements in JavaFX 2.0 are around language features of JavaFX Script (such as binding and sequences), so hopefully they can maintain some of the benefits.

Richard Bair added a very insightful post on his blog, which goes into more details on the language changes and is well worth a read.

JavaFX Mobile

JavaFX Mobile has not seen a lot of action since JavaOne 2009 and the mobile focus in the keynote was on JavaME and LWUIT.  I am still a big fan of the “write once, run anywhere” mantra, and am waiting for this to return to the mobile space.  With the proliferation of different mobile programming models (Android, iPhone, WebOS, etc.), whoever solves the mobile cross-platform development problem in a technically solid way will profit immensely.

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What’s Next?

Now that Oracle is done with their announcements, I have some of my own.  If you are at JavaOne, drop by my Wednesday session entitled “JFXtras: JavaFX Controls, Layouts, Services, and More” at 2:15 to hear it firsthand, or wait for my blog post shortly following that.

If you preregistered for any JavaFX sessions at JavaOne, you probably noticed a bit of churn in the past few weeks.  I actually requested that they drop my talk entitled “Take Control of JavaFX”, because Jonathan and I didn’t think we could do justice to the topic.

However, we came up with an alternative talk, which we believe will be even better and more topical.  Here are the talk details:

JavaFX Your Way: Building JavaFX Applications with Alternative Languages
Abstract: JavaFX is more than a language. It is also a platform for building immersive applications with graphics, animation, and rich media. In this session, you will see how you can leverage JavaFX from a host of different JVM languages, including Java, JRuby, Groovy, Scala, and Clojure.

The talk is on Monday at 4PM in Hilton San Francisco, Golden Gate 8.  Hope to see you there!

I am honored to be accepted by some great conferences to speak on JavaFX.  Each of the talks I am giving is unique, which means more work for me, but is a great opportunity to talk about some different topics that I think are important for folks using JavaFX.

First up is Jazoon in Zurich, Switzerland on June 1-3.  I have heard great things about this conference from folks who have attended in past years, and have already heard from some folks who will be attending my talk.  The topic for my session will be Building Data Rich Interfaces with JavaFX.  I have some good content lined up from my open source projects (actually too much content), so it should be a great session.

Next I will be speaking at JavaOne in my hometown of San Francisco on September 19-23.  Oracle is pulling out all the stops for this conference, taking over a full block of Mason Street as the JavaOne “Zone”.  They will be putting up a big tent with videostreaming and other festivities, in addition to the 4,000 square feet of space dedicated to talks and sessions.  For those of you who are not aware of the magnitude of Oracle, here is a shot of what they have done in past years for Oracle Open World:

I am fortunate enough to be able to co-present 2 Technical Sessions and 2 BOFs at JavaOne 2010:

Technical Session 1: Pro JavaFX: Developing Enterprise Applications
Co-presented with Jim Weaver

Technical Session 2: Take Control of JavaFX
Co-presented with Jonathan Giles from the JavaFX Control Team

Birds of a Feather Session 1: JFXtras: JavaFX Controls, Layouts, Services, and More
Co-presented with Dean Iverson and the rest of the JFXtras Team

Birds of a Feather Session 2: JavaFX Author JAM
Co-presented with Jim Weaver, Jim Clarke, Dean Iverson, and many other JavaFX authors (to be announced)

If you haven’t already, it is not too late to book your ticket for JavaOne.  This will definitely be a year you won’t want to miss!

At the Lean Software and Systems Conference a week ago, Israel Gat, Erik Huddleston, and I did a presentation on Reformulating the Product Delivery Process.  At the end of this talk, we unveiled an open-source, JavaFX tool called Apropos that we use for Product Portfolio Planning at Inovis.

Note: The data has been blurred to hide corporate information.  The final release will include a test bed of public data, which can be used for display and testing.

What you are seeing in the above screenshot is the Portfolio Kanban View that we use for tracking features through their full lifecycle from proposal through validation.  It is backed by the Rally Agile Lifecycle Management tool, which exposes Web Services for accessing all of our planning data.  The entire UI was written in JavaFX, and makes heavy use of JFXtras features, such as the XTableView.

The plan for this tool is to do the initial launch of a BSD-licensed open-source version on May 22nd.  This will include support for the Rally Community Edition, which is free for up to 10 users.  In future releases we plan to support other Agile Lifecycle Management tools, both commercial and open-source, but will need assistance from the community to do this.

If you are interested in helping out with this project, please contact me.  I will have limited bandwidth until after the initial launch, but after that would love to scale up this project with interested parties.

Here is the full presentation, which includes additional screenshots of Apropos at the end (slides 15-19):