Raible Designs

Integrating JCaptcha with Acegi and AppFuse

Jason Thrasher has put together a nice howto for integrating JCAPTCHA with AppFuse via Struts. If you're interested in making your application more secure for signup or authentication, check it out!

Join the AppFuse Frappr Group

If you're an AppFuse user, please join our AppFuse Frappr Group. GlassFish may be winning in java.net stats, but I think we can beat them at the Frappr stuff.

[ANN] AppFuse 1.9.2 Released

This release includes CSS Framework integration, EMMA code-coverage support and AppGen sub-package support. Thanks to the CSS Framework Design Contest Winners, Doug Hays and Mika Göckel for their help with this release.

To install and configure AppFuse for development, see the QuickStart Guide. Thanks to all the sponsors who have contributed products and free hosting to the AppFuse project.

• Download
• Release Notes
• Learn more about AppFuse

To see how AppFuse works, please see the following demos (username: mraible, password: tomcat):

• Struts + Spring + Hibernate
• Spring + iBATIS
• WebWork + Spring + Hibernate
• JSF + Spring + Hibernate
• Tapestry + Spring + Hibernate

TIP: If you login as an administrator, you can change the theme by appending ?theme=themename to the URL. The default theme can be set in web/WEB-INF/web.xml.

Comments and issues can be sent to the mailing list or posted to JIRA.

NOTE: This release contains Acegi Security 1.0 RC2 rather than the recently released 1.0. This is because a couple issues were found with the 1.0 release. When Acegi Security 1.0.1 (or 1.1) is released, all AppFuse users are encouraged to upgrade.

This (hopefully) marks the last release from AppFuse 1.x. AppFuse 2.0 development should start shortly. See the roadmap for more details. I'd like to say it'll be done in the fall, but I already said it'd be done two months ago.

P.S. For those of you that won the CSS Framework Design Contest, I'll be contacting you within the week to get you your prizes.

Update: If you're building AppFuse on Linux, you should be aware of some non-English encoding issues. The solution is to add something like the following to your ~/.bashrc file.

export LC_CENGINE=en_US
export LANG=en_US
export LANGUAGE=en_US

It's all about finding people and stickiness

From Malcom Gladwell's "The Tipping Point":

The Law of the Few says that there are a few exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them. The lesson of stickiness is the same. There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.

[ANN] AppFuse 1.9.2 RC1 Released

The primary reason for this release is to integrate Mike Stenhouse's CSS Framework. Since this involves many UI changes, we're publishing a release candidate that uses Herryanto Siatono's "simplicity" theme. For the final 1.9.2 release, we hope to offer themes from all the CSS Framework Design Contest Winners.

To install and configure AppFuse for development, see the QuickStart Guide. Thanks to all the sponsors who have contributed products and free hosting to the AppFuse project.

• Download (now points to 1.9.2 final)
• Release Notes
• Learn more about AppFuse

To see how AppFuse in action, please see the following demos (username: mraible, password: tomcat):

• Struts + Spring + Hibernate
• Spring + iBATIS
• WebWork + Spring + Hibernate
• JSF + Spring + Hibernate
• Tapestry + Spring + Hibernate

Comments and issues can be sent to the mailing list or posted to JIRA (please use version 1.9.2). Hopefully we can release 1.9.2 final in the next week or so.

Update: I've finished a first stab at integrating the puzzlewithstyle and andreas01 themes. I've only tested these in Firefox so far, but you can see them in action on the demo site using the webwork and jsf flavors.

Update 2: 1.9.2 Final has been released.

Knowledge of AppFuse and an appreciation of fine wine

It's not everyday you see a job that lists "Knowledge of AppFuse and an appreciation of fine wine" as optional skills. I asked Julie if she wanted to move to Napa Valley, but no dice. Too bad - sounds like a job I'd really enjoy. Thanks to Solomon for the tip.

Unfortunately, I'm still working on AppFuse 1.9.2 and I've given up on estimating when I'll be done. I'm having a hard time finding time to work on it between client meeting and being a good dad. The biggest frustrations so far are the good ol' component based frameworks: JSF and Tapestry. JSF sucks because of JSP and Tapestry is giving me fits because I can't seem to stuff a <span> inside a @FieldLabel. I'd like to think that component-based frameworks are more flexible than their action-based counterparts, but I'm finding quite the opposite so far.

Is there a component like panelGrid that uses ul instead of table?

JSF 1.1 has a problem with JSP in that it can't bind components together when a page first loads. This is well documented in Improving JSF by Dumping JSP by Hans Bergsten.

The easy example of this problem is when you have <h:outputLabel> tags before <h:inputText> tags. The average JSF user might not notice the problem, but if you customize <h:outputLabel> to display "required field" indicators based on the "required" attribute of <h:inputText> - the issue slaps you in the face. The easy solution is to use <h:panelGrid> to layout your form data, and everything magically works. However, table-based forms are ugly and I'd much rather do pretty forms like this one.

In order to create pretty forms and get around the JSF sucks with JSP problem, I'm looking for a component similar to panelGrid - but it spits out <ul> and <li> instead of <table> and <tr>/<td>. Does anyone know of such a component? I asked this question on the MyFaces list this morning, but haven't had much luck.

I'm fully aware that Facelets (or Clay) will solve this problem. However, I'm merely trying to get AppFuse 1.9.2 released without making major changes. I suppose I could always go with ugly table-based forms, but I'd rather not.

RE: Thoughts on the future direction of AppFuse

Sanjiv has some interesting thoughts on the future direction of AppFuse. To summarize: take on Seam head-to-head, but use Spring instead. Get rid of all the other frameworks except for JSF, Spring and Hibernate. Furthermore, focus on making Web 2.0 applications easy to create and use.

I like Sanjiv's ideas, but I'm not so hot on ditching all the other web frameworks in favor of JSF. I'm still not convinced it's the best solution for Java web development. The idea behind JSF is great, but the implementation has warts. Maybe that'll be fixed with JSF 1.2, but it will likely be quite a few months before MyFaces supports it. Yeah, I know there's the RI, but it is an RI and you remember the 1.1 version don't you?

I'd hate to give up WebWork support because I've used it on a couple of projects and really like it. Ditching Spring MVC would likely be a mistake as well since it's the most popular web framework among AppFuse users today. While I love what Tapestry brings to the table, it is harder (for the newbie) than JSF. Also, it seems to be the least-used web framework in AppFuse, which means I'm doing a lot of maintenance for no reason. AppFuse 2.0 will definitely make things simpler (JDK 5, Maven 2, standard directory layout, better IDE integration), but it will still be difficult to support 5 web frameworks and 2 persistence frameworks.

What do you think about Sanjiv's proposal? It sounds good to me. However, I'd rather see different lead developers for each framework and continue to support them all - except for Struts of course.

It's good to be home

After a week and a half on the road, it's awesome to be home. JavaOne was a great time, but pretty exhausting too - and I didn't even go to any sessions! After attending the Ajax Experience, all the JavaOne topics seemed like old news. Actually, I was motivated on Thursday, but when I tried to register using the schedule builder, all sessions were full. Hot topics of the week were GWT, Avatar in JSF and Java EE. I do hope to checkout GWT sometime, but it'll probably take me a month or two. I'm booked at clients for the next couple of weeks, and after that I'd rather just enjoy the summer than work 12-hour days. As far as AppFuse 1.9.2, that's high on my list - but it'll probably take me a couple days to complete since I'll be doing it at night.

The Tangosol/SolarMetric party didn't disappoint, and Geronimo Live was a smashing success. There's a bunch of pictures (and video) posted on the Virtuas Travels Blog.

I arrived home Friday afternoon and the fun hasn't stopped. Softball game yesterday, followed by 3 BBQs and a night of playing with the kids on a friend's swingset. Today, we went to the 12th Annual VWs on the Green show. Unfortunately, it was 90°F, so we didn't last long. I'd like to say I got some good ideas for my bus, but in reality I chased Abbie and Jack around the whole time. Below are some pictures from the show today. As for my bus, it's in the shop, but no work has begun. I need to visit them this week to get something in writing so they can start doing body work.

JavaOne 2006 Begins

After 3 hours of sleep, I'm up bright and early - attending the JavaOne Keynote. They're still shuffling people in, and have this awesome reggae-type band jamming. They're really good - I hope they're here later this week. The wireless sucks (as usual), so I'm using bluetooth to connect. Watch this post, I'll update it as the good announcements come.

We're starting off with a 10 minute overview of the Schedule Builder and how to use it. For those sessions that are full, apparently they'll schedule a 2nd showing. Most most sessions, there's already available online in PDF. After the show, most sessions should be available online in video form. Everyone should act like a Brazilian at this conference - meet people you don't know and learn as much as you can.

Jonathan Schwartz is on stage, dressed in a suite, talking about how they're offering a now offering a "Free Kit" on their website. Apparently, you can now get their Niagra servers for free. Sounds wierd, who knows if it's true. This JavaOne is the largest JavaOne ever, as apparent from this exhibition hall. "The Java community has never been more vibrant." The JCP has 1052 members. Of these, Jonathan says there aren't enough individuals on this committee. Everyone should go out and join. The community defines the future of Java.

Now there's a guy from Motorola on stage. He's the guy who originally introduced Java at this conference 11 years ago. The next few years will be just as crazy as the last 10 years for Java - only it will happen on a high-speed mobile network. In the mobile space, their are a lot of proprietary things going on. By encouraging and using Java, applications can be developed and deployed easily across many mobile devices. Motorola is selling 200 million phones this year. They've shipped 90 million in the last 6 months. Java needs to stay unified so write-once, run anywhere works on all devices. Motorola is publishing many open source projects for Java and Linux on http://opensource.motorola.com. To summarize, Motorola alone out-ships the PC industry.

Mark Shuttleworth from Canonical, Inc. is now on stage. Mark is deeply involved in the Ubuntu community. As of today, Java will be directly available to Ubuntu, Gentoo, Debian, etc. Apparently, this is because Sun has made some changes that allow it to be distributed with Linux. They're talking about Linux on Niagara - it sounds like there might be some announcements around this during the week. There's still no announcements about open-sourcing Java or re-licensing.

Mark Fluery has now been invited up on stage. He's got a red beret on. The Red Hat deal closes on May 31st. JBoss is joining the NetBeans community. Mark seems to think the next big thing in Java is Tools. Seems like a publicity stunt since they're talking about Netbeans. It will be interesting to see if JBoss becomes heavily involved in IDE development. Expect more innovation. You should expect more from the future, from the companies that provide Java, and from the community that uses it. Jonathan's first act of congress in his new post was to ask someone to return to Sun. Rich Green is the Executive VP of Software for Sun. He's been back at Sun for a week and a half, and he's been in meetings the entire time.

"Are you going to open source Java?", asks Jonathan.

"It's not a question of whether, it's a question of how." replies Rich.

So there you have it. They're going to open source Java, it's simply a matter of getting through all the politics and compatibility-issues to make it happen. Rich is now on stage by himself, encouraging the audience to get more involved in Java. Java EE 5 was recently approved. Now they've invited the Java EE Expert Group on stage. Everyone has a company sign to show. My name is on the slide, but it doesn't look like individuals were invited. Oh well, it's not like I contributed anything.

Jeff Jackson, Senior VP of Java Enterprise Platforms and Developer Products is now on stage. Java EE 5 is the big thing at the conference this year, and has all the right stuff: Ease of Development, simplified programming model with annotations, EJB 3.0 support for POJOs, new Java Persistence API, Web 2.0 Support, .NET Interoperability, Simplified SOA. NetBeans 5.5 supports Java EE today, so Jeff recommends you download it today.

Jeet Kaul is now on stage and he's going to do a demo of developing an application with Java EE 5 and NetBeans. He's using a nightly build from May 10th. I'm not sure if it's a nightly build of NetBeans or Glassfish that he's using. The demo he showed is pretty cheesy. He added an "author" column to a table, added a property to an Entity bean and then added an input field to the UI. This was followed with a web services demo and an Ajax demo. The Ajax demo was kinda cool - NetBeans allows you to drag and drop JSF components into a page. It drops in code rather than using a WYSIWYG view. I'm not sure if a WYSIWYG view is an option, as they didn't demo or mention anything.

Today Sun is donating their Java Message System (JMS) and NetBeans Enterprise Pack (UML, collaboration, etc.) to the open source community.

Craig McClanahan is on stage, He's got a slide with Duke holding a beer stein. The beer stein, and the Sierra Nevada that Craig pulled out are to represent the real reason we're here: The Beer. Craig is doing a demo with Java Studio Creator and creating a Pub Locator application that utilizes built-in GoogleMaps components. Craig deployed and showed a demo locating all the pubs near Moscone center. Then he turned "boss mode" on and clicked on a link to the Thirsty Bear. This took him to the new Java Ajax portal at developers.sun.com/ajax. Craig's demo was followed with a demo of the new Pet Store - with Ajax/Dojo enhancements.

Sun will be donating Java Studio Creator to open source (at netbeans.org) in the near future. In case you're not aware, Sun has recently released a number of other products on netbeans.org: NetBeans Profiler, NetBeans Mobility Pack, NetBeans Matisse.

Now there's a guy from Microsoft on stage talking about .NET and Java EE 5 interoperability. There's a "Tango" project that has a runtime that provides the interoperability between platforms. Now they're doing a demo with NetBeans 5.5 and its BPEL engine; all running on Open ESB. They demonstrating using WFC and Vista on the Windows side to connect to a web service on the GlassFish side. The Tango project has been renamed to Web Services Intererability Technology (WSIT) and is available on java.net at http://wsit.dev.java.net.

There's some new guys on stage now and they're talking about "Simplified SOA" with NetBeans Enterprise Pack using BPEL. While the BPEL tools in NetBeans look cool, they're definitely starting to lose the audience; people have started streaming out of the auditorium. More open source contributions: BPEL Engine into Open ESB and Sun Java System Portal Server.

Big Announcement: all of the technologies mentioned today will be under the umbrella of the OpenJava EE project.

Richard Blair (Swing Engineer from Sun) and Romain Guy have come on stage to demonstrate a Java SE Swing Web 2.0 Mashup. The demo uses Mustang and starts with showing a Swing client that connects to Flickr and allows you to browse photos. The slideshow feature is very cool and allows you to do 3d rendering and angling of images. It's one of the slickest-looking desktop apps I've ever seen. After showing the photo feature, they're showing how you can integrate this will a Google Map-looking service to show pictures on a map. All of the components in this demonstration are open source or simply customized Swing components. They ended the demo with showing a preview feature. The preview creates an applet that runs in a web browser (even when you're disconnected) and draws Roman's trip on a map, playing music and fading in pictures as the trip progresses. I was blown away at this point and would love to get my hands on this application. Hopefully it will be made available online, or maybe as a Flash movie?

There you have it folks. Sun is going to open source Java, just like I predicted a couple of weeks ago. It's not a matter of when, it's a matter of how.