2009
JavaFX Layout Secrets
I am very pleased to have Amy Fowler (Aim) presenting on JavaFX Layouts at our January Silicon Valley JavaFX Users Group (SvJugFx). For those of you who don't know Aim, she was a founding member of the Swing team, has done some Rock Star presentations at JavaOne, and is a core member of the JavaFX team focused on all things layout.
SvJugFx Streamed Live with Richard Bair
For those of you who don't know, SvJugFx stands for the Silicon Valley JavaFX Users Group. We will be holding our very first meeting this coming Wednesday with a live, streamed presentation from the world renowned Richard Bair (who is now infamous for divulging JavaFX secrets at Devoxx).
2009 Devoxx Posts + NetBeans JavaFX Designer Preview
The two talks I gave at Devoxx 2009 are now available on the Parleys.com website for online viewing.
JFXtras 0.6 Preview Available!
Happy Thanksgiving from the JFXtras team! While everyone else is celebrating the holiday with friends and family, we are going to be busy finishing up the 0.6 release.
Devoxx Conference Session Slides
Overall I was very impressed with Devoxx. Everything including the movie theater venue, quality of the speakers, and professionalism of the attendees was top-notch. Stephan Janssen definitely puts on quite an amazing show!
Devoxx University Slides
My Devoxx university session yesterday was packed, which was awesome! It was 3 hours of hard-core JavaFX knowledge, and almost everyone stayed for the duration. Aaron Houston got a great shot of the venue (more on the Java Champions site):
LearnFX and Win at Devoxx
Next week I will be giving two talks on JavaFX at Devoxx in Belgium. The first is a university session on Tuesday at 13:30 called The JavaFX Platform - A Java Developer's Guide. The second is a technical session on Thursday at 14:00 entitled Pro Javafx - Developing Enterprise Applications.
Announcing the JavaFX Twitter Group
JavaFX has a very active Twitter community. Some have even said that the best way to get help with your JavaFX app is to ask on Twitter first. But how do you know who to follow?
Meet the New Java Store
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:
First SvJugFx Meetup - JavaFX with Richard Bair
I am pleased to announce the formation of a new Silicon Valley JavaFX User Group. While this group is rooted in the SF Bay Area, we also plan to make it easy for remote attendees to watch and participate by doing live streaming of our meetings via USTREAM and allowing remote participation through Google Moderator.
WidgetFX 1.2.4 Released - Happy Halloween!
We have an early Halloween treat from the WidgetFX team... a new software release! The 1.2.4 version of WidgetFX includes some new functionality and fixes a number of issues that our user community has requested. New SlideShow Widget The SlideShow widget was completely rewritten from scratch for this release. It makes use of the pre-release JFXtras XShelf component for transitions and paging forward and back. Simply click on the side images to scroll forwards and backwards through your library.
JUGSpinner Premieres at SVCodeCamp
Keith Combs and I did a presentation on JavaFX and WidgetFX at Silicon Valley Code Camp this past weekend to a packed room (see below for the slides). This was my first time visiting SVCodeCamp and I was very impressed... With a 2 day total of over 1700 attendees, it was the place to be in the Bay Area!
Hanging out on the Ranch
All this week my co-author Dean Iverson and I will be fielding JavaFX questions on the Java Ranch. Drop by and ask a few questions yourself and you may win a free copy of the Pro JavaFX Platform book!
30 Lines of JavaFX
What can you do in 30 lines of JavaFX? JFXStudio is running a contest right now to find this out...
WidgetFX Contest Winners!
I am pleased to announce the winners of the WidgetFX Developer's Contest. There were lots of great entries (22 in total), which made this a very hard decision. You can browse the full set of entries yourself on the WidgetFX Library page:
WidgetFX Contest - Finish Line
Auto-Completion on the Test Test Train
The Sun training department just put out an update to their Tech Test Train application. Even if you tried it before and were put off by bugs or the absurd level of difficulty, it is definitely worth another look!
WidgetFX Contest Heating Up!
With only 12 days left in the WidgetFX contest, there are a bunch of new entrants. You can see them all on the Widget Library page: http://widgetfx.org/portal/library
JFXtras Team Grows Up
We have had quite a few additions to the project team over the past couple weeks.
Watch WidgetFX and JFXtras at the SDForum
Last night I presented at the SDForum Java SIG to a very engaged and enthusiastic crowd. This was the longest presentation to date, but the audience was great, and even stayed afterwards to ask questions. Also, Rich Rein was an outstanding host, inviting us out to drink beers until midnight after the event (I hope his wife wasn't upset!)