Steve On Java

This past month we had a great combined meeting of the Silicon Valley JavaFX User Group (SvJugFx) together with the Silicon Valley Web User Group.  The presenters included Richard Hyde and James Allen from Oracle on the Java Store and Yoav Landman and Fred Simon from JFrog on repository management with Artifactory.

Our April SvJugFx presentation will feature Stuart Marks from the JavaFX Team in Hands on JavaFX – Scripting the Scene Graph.  To attend in person or via our live web stream (and be eligible for great prizes!), please sign-up here: http://www.svjugfx.org/calendar/12863551/

We were also fortunate enough to be contacted by the folks at Ubivent who have developed a JavaFX-based event platform.  Their platform is used by large corporations like SAP, and they have generously offered to host our videos going forward.  Therefore, you can now watch all the SvJugFx videos using JavaFX technology!

To watch the latest videos, you can go to the landing page for the new SvJugFX Video Site:

Registration is optional, but will allow you to comment on the presentations.  Once you launch the application you will be taken to an event hall that lets you choose which presentation you want to watch:

Finally, when you click on a presentation you will be given a virtual theater experience with side-by-side slides and video.  You can click on the double arrows to expand it to full screen, skip around by chapter, and comment on the video as you are watching.

For convenience, here are some links that will take you directly to the two videos and their associated slide shows:

Java Store & Java Warehouse Overview (video) (slides)

Repository Management with JFrog Artifactory (video) (slides)

Also, we have posted the videos on our Parleys SvJugFx Space and will continue to do that for folks who like using this excellent presentation platform.

The Java Store team at Sun has been busy at work on a new release of the Java Store, which is finally available in Beta.  The easiest way to get it is to go through the Java Warehouse to the developer preview link here:

http://store.java.com/developerrelease

(If you are on Windows 7 or Vista-64, you can still run the store with no problems…  Just make sure you have a 32-bit JRE installed)

The latest version of the Java Store sports a new look and feel that is a dramatic improvement over the early versions.  Some of the new user interface features include:

• Integrated UI with Featured Apps, Top Downloads, and App Browsing all in one place
• Free-form text search for finding new applications quickly
• Improved navigation – New apps listed first, and navigation at all levels

Perhaps the biggest change is the ability for developers to charge for applications.  This is provided via integration with PayPal, and currently available for U.S. customers.  Full details on the payment system can be found in this press release.

Of course, the best applications are available for free…  Be sure to try launching WidgetFX from the Java Store and let me know how it works!

Congratulations to the JavaFX team on a very nice face lift for the Java Store!

I know that many of the Java Store development team members read this blog, including Joshua Marinacci, so feel free to use the comments section to give them constructive feedback.

(Did I mention Josh has an awesome new design blog?)