blue-infinity is not just keeping up with the latest trends and technologies: It’s at the forefront of technological knowledge. We focus on what will bring added value to our customers.

Jan Stenvall, a blue-infinity Java consultant, has written a White Paper covering the subject of JavaFX. The reason for the White Paper is to keep colleagues and customers abreast of these trends and technologies to bring clarity and guidance for future investments and decisions.

This post picks up the thread from previous b-i blog posts about Rich Internet Application frameworks. And as they stated, it is far too early to declare the death of Flash and Silverlight. These two products are still ruling the market of rich UI frameworks. They are mature and have a broad market penetration. But Flash for mobile has reached its end-of-life and the future for Silverlight is uncertain, according to a “Building Windows 8″ blog that says that Internet Explorer 10 will be plugin-free.

However, the companies backing Flex and Silverlight are reviewing their business plans and are turning, slowly but surely, their attention towards HTML5. In parallel, interest for Flex and Silverlight is declining; the trend is clearly visible on Google Insight for Search (Google 2012).

Relative interest levels of Flex (red), Silverlight (yellow) and JavaFX (blue). This diagram was computed with Google Insights for Search.

HTML 5 is still in its infancy, and still will be in the near future. This technology is certainly not a complete replacement for Flash or Silverlight. For example, accessing the native platform and device capabilities is still limited in HTML5.

These frameworks, including HTML5, may be valid options under many circumstances, but will not answer the call for more sophisticated, complex and richer web experiences.

This gap in the market paves the way for JavaFX which has been updated to face the modern enterprise challenges. With the strong backing from Oracle, JavaFX is a serious contender in the UI framework arena. Since it is built using Java, in concert with and for the Java community, it means that huge investments and the amassed Java knowledge can be reused. This minimizes investments and brings a faster return on investment.

According to the TIOBE Programming Community Index (TIOBE 2012), Java is still the number one rated programming language. Java has a long track record and has been proven in the enterprise environment. This, along with a strong Java developer community, will empower
the adoption of JavaFX.

A feature comparison with more mature frameworks like Flex (Flash) and Silverlight, shows that JavaFX is still a bit behind. But Oracle pushes JavaFX onto the market with the motto that Java is everywhere and JavaFX will be piggy-backing.

The unique selling point is the ubiquity of Java: It leans on the enterprise-proven Java language. And in that sense, the future for JavaFX is looking rather good.

Oracle has issued a private release of JavaFX Scene Builder and it will be followed by a public release anticipated for early 2012. It is currently available to preselected partners for beta evaluation. The JavaFX Scene Builder is written with JavaFX 2.0 APIs. Oracle is eating its own dog food.

The JavaFX Scene Builder will have these features:

• Simple drag and drop positioning of GUI elements
• Graphical FXML editor
• Strong  mapping to JavaFX APIs
• Set and preview JavaFX properties and effects
• CSS setting and previewing
• Fully written with JavaFX version 2.0 APIs!

The JavaFX community is gaining momentum and there are several third party frameworks and libraries. The following section shows a selection of community-provided frameworks:

JFX Flow (http://www.zenjava.com/jfx-flow) is a free, open source framework for developing rich, interactive and user friendly web-style GUIs for desktops using JavaFX (2.0+). JFX Flow combines the powerful feature set of Java FX (styling, animations, FXML, etc.) with a simple ‘web flow’ style framework.

MigLayoutFX2 (http://www.miglayout.com, formerly called MigPane) is a wrapper for MigLayout, one of the most powerful layout managers for Swing.

DataFX (http://www.javafxdata.org) is a project that aims to make the process of using JavaFX ListView, TableView, and TreeView controls easier, more functional, and more powerful. It provides various data source adapters to ensure convenience around populating JavaFX
controls.

RedFX (http://www.redfx.org) provides functionality that allows JavaFX applications to share data with each other and with server applications without the need of writing lots of specific boiler plate code.

Read more about JavaFX on http://fxexperience.com. “Tour de Flex” JavaFX equivalent: JavaFX Ensemble: http://download.oracle.com/otndocs/products/javafx/2.0.2/samples/Ensemble/index.html

After recently misplacing a USB drive (luckily already encrypted), I decided to put  together a quick guide for anyone interested in securing their data on USB/Local drives through encryption, using free tools available for download. 

These days everyone stores huge amounts of data on USB drives (be it small pen drives or larger hard drives reaching 1TB or more). We carry this information around in our pockets everywhere, sharing with co-workers and friends, at our clients and perhaps even in public locations.

The main question you should ask yourself from a security standpoint is “What stops somebody from connecting to your drive and viewing/stealing/destroying your data?  

Remember the old DOS command format L:\ /q (this one quickly deletes Gigabytes of data in seconds – of course we could use tools to recover at the expense of your administrator’s time and nerves..).

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For those without Microsoft Project Server, here is a way to manage shared resources through various projects. Through the use of this method, the program manager or unit manager is able to check team member allocation and also plan projects.

 Firstly, you will need to create the resource pool by following the steps detailed below:

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Recently, I was asked if it was possible to create a task which would last the entire duration of a project (e.g. Project Management task, or weekly meeting) and set it to auto-extend should the project be delayed. Here is the solution:

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With Microsoft Project Professional, it is possible to synchronise your tasks between Project and Microsoft SharePoint. This allows project managers to take advantage of the advanced scheduling capabilities of Project Professional, whilst enjoying the collaborative capabilities of SharePoint.

In the attached PDF, I will explain the steps that will allow you to exploit this extremely useful capability.

Please click here to view the PDF

A great time-saving feature of Internet Explorer 9/Windows 7 is the capability to ‘pin’ sites to the taskbar. In doing this, not only will the user have their favourite sites close to hand, but they will also be able to use the pinned site as they do other desktop applications, as it has its own Jumplist and icons.

The good news for website owners is that the Jumplist can be customised. In the attached PDF, I will show you how you can add the pinned site functionality to your website, as well as customize the Jumplist.

Click here to view the PDF

In the past few months, new technical products and components have hit the market, giving us the opportunity to build web pages in a more effective and timely manner. Many might say that they have been developing Ajax enabled web pages for years, without issues. Whilst this is true, significant opportunities for improvement have arisen which deserve to be considered. These developments will help give new meaning to the words purity, simplicity, interoperability, reliability, performance and attractiveness.

So what’s new?

Let’s have a look at some key events from the past year:

March 2010: Microsoft officially announced that they will contribute a HTML template engine to the jQuery community. In addition, for several months jQuery has benefitted from official Microsoft core support worldwide.

April 2010: Visual Studio 2010 offers comprehensive support for SharePoint 2010 web pages and features development.

May 2010: SharePoint 2010 is shipped with support for .Net Framework 3.5 features as well as Astoria and Rest WCF services.

October 2010: The template engine from Microsoft is now part of the official jQuery web site. It is recognized as a valid beta to be released at a later date, and is available for download now.

So what does this mean?

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Since 2002, social networks are spreading worldwide thanks to the growth of the Internet. More and more people are using social applications like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Wikipedia… seeking, sharing and discussing information has become a way of life to them.

By adding a new social layer to Sharepoint 2010, Microsoft is embracing this new trend in user behavior. These new collaboration and communication tools are  the missing pieces in the Sharepoint puzzle and will help many companies to increased information sharing to make communication easier.

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Just back from the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 conference in Las Vegas where, along with 7,400 enthusiatic developers and IP professionals, it was clear that Microsoft has listened very carefully to all the comments and suggestions for improving the SharePoint platform. The result, which will be out in Beta sometime during November and released to market towards the middle of next year, could well be a huge success, as it finally looks like a mature product carefully crafted to cater for business needs whilst keeping faith with the familiar Office applications, all of which will now function seemlessly as applications within the browser.

Outlined below is my personal list of highlights from SharePoint 2010:

1. The Office Ribbon is used throughout the SharePoint 2010 user interface.
2. SharePoint 2010 is cross-browser compatible, with official support for Firefox and Safari.
3. Offline replication is available via SharePoint Workspace 2010.
4. Complete Multilingual User Interface support via skinning.
5. Better compliance with standards and enhanced accessibility.
6. Improved audience targeting.
7. More and improved web parts.
8. Office web applications for: Excel, Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, InfoPath, Visio and Access.
9. Improved My Sites and user profiles.
10. Social tagging features, bookmarking, feedback and note board. Read the rest of this entry »

Sept. 24  2009 : Creation of Open Mashup Alliance

On September 24 2009, Major Mashup actors decided to promote interoperability and adoption of Entreprise Mashup Solution through the creation of the Open Mashup Alliance (www.openmashup.org). The Open Mashup Alliance will evolve and promote an open schema and language for mashups called Enterprise Markup Mashup Language (EMML). EMML has been developed specifically to facilitate the creation of mashup services and mashup applications.

What’s Mashup ? Songs of the blogs says that Mashup will be the technology where to be  in the  coming years, but can someone define what Enterprise Mashup is? if you drill down a bit it is a different way to aggregate  information for end users – but what is the difference? I hope these few lines will help you to better place this “buzzword” in the  IT world.

What’s a Mashup?

Wikipedia describes a mashup as “a Web site or application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience.” In short terms we can compare it to portal and portlet.  But defining an enterprise mashup is another story. Connecting your ERP with your CRM and B2C data with one or multiple common denominator, all while maintaining single sign-on usage is not the same kind of problem as showing rss feeds and micro apps on your default web page.

SOA Magazine give the following definition of an enterprise mashup  “a user-centric combination of standards-based internal and external data sources”. Well what does it mean? To better understand remember the following key differentiators:

User-centric :  Mashups are for the end-users and often created by the users themselves. The recipient of a mashup is also another user like a co-worker, a partner, or a customer.

Standards-based internal and external data :  Mashups are predicated on the wave of standardized data and access formats that are washing over us including Web services and RSS.

Mashup can be compared with other common data integration tools. At first glance there are apparent overlaps with popular enterprise technologies like Business Process Management (BPM), Enterprise Information Integration (EII), and even the SOA Architect’s favorite tool, the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). A mashup, is none of these things but complements all of them. All of these technologies have established value in the enterprise. Mashups support and extend them by aggregating and introducing the ability to create dynamic, user-centric solutions.

Major actors

Today’s main actors are Hinchcliffe & Company, Jackbe, Kapow Technologies, Xignite and Google with its app engine. My feeling is that the race is on, let’s see who will be the fastest  and the most hungry one.

References:

Jackbe whitepaper

SharePoint Conference: Building a SharePoint Designer Mashup

After the well-known poor success of  Windows Vista among the end users, Microsoft was forced to admit that only a new improved version of Windows might gain customers’ trust again.

Because of the fear that Windows Vista gave to most private users, considering the incompatibilities with hardware, the drivers’ issues and other hanging problems, few companies around the world chose migrating to that version during 2009, keeping Windows XP (SP2 or SP3) as the major stable image within their infrastructure.

However, even if several serious surveys tend to show that less than 20% of IT professionals plan to migrate to Windows 7 within the next year, almost 50% of them will do it before 2011, which gives a huge opportunity to work on this new release and its associated deployment tools. Actually, day after day, since the RTM version went out to MSDN subscribers, people’s confidence in the new Windows version tends to increase quickly, modifying  for sure all the forecasts of migration.

Sooner or later, as Windows Millennium was replaced by Windows 98se, and Windows 2000 was replaced by Windows XP, it’s likely that most home users and businesses will be upgrading from their current operating system to Windows 7 and we will see Windows Vista replaced by Windows 7.

Below we collected some information about the main 10 questions that people might have before moving to Windows 7, wondering if it is safe, if the entire hardware will have to be changed or how upgrades might be done.

1. Do you need to buy new hardware?

Will you need to buy new hardware if you want to use Windows 7? That depends. Microsoft’s recommended hardware specifications for Windows 7 Release Candidate include a 1 GHz processor, at least 1 GB of RAM, 16 GB of free disk space, and 128 MB of graphics memory (for Aero). Those requirements are pretty much the same as the published system specs for Vista Home Premium/Business/Enterprise/Ultimate. Many testers report that Windows 7 RC/RTM runs faster on their low-powered machines (512 MB of RAM) than does Vista. They even comment it being almost similar to XP in term of boot time!

Actually, if your computer is powerful enough to run Vista acceptably,  Windows 7will probably run better. If you’re currently using XP on a computer with less than 512 MB of RAM or a processor that’s slower than 800 MHz, you’ll need to upgrade your hardware.

2. Can you upgrade from XP directly or do in-place upgrade?

Many people who are still running Windows XP want to know whether they can upgrade to Windows 7 without losing all their preferences and settings. The answer is…more or less. There is not a direct upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows 7. An in-place upgrade is available only if you’re running Vista SP1 or later, funny. If you’re running XP, even if your hardware is sufficient, you’ll have to do a clean installation of Windows 7. However, you can use the Microsoft Deployment Tool 2010, which includes the User State Migration Tool, to transfer your user settings for the desktop and applications to the new Windows 7 installation.

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2003: As in many relationships, first contact often shapes the course of events!  As the manager of the “Microsoft” department for Blue-Infinity, I had the privilege of being the first to dig into the first version of WSS, i.e. WSS 2.0.  I have to say that first impressions were hardly reassuring, especially as market pressures to equip ourselves with this new wonder product forced us to jump in at the deep end – only to find a product completely unknown, immature and bug-ridden.

2003 – 2006: It was a bit like swimming against the tide for a few years as we developed proof of concept after proof of concept, trying to find the best way to use this wonderful product – without, it must be said, a great deal of success.

2006: Time moved on and MOSS 2007 appeared. At last, the platform appeared stable and the promises seemed to be kept! Although it is still pretty greedy on resources, we have now nevertheless crossed the Rubicon  to such an extent that we have moved from “Oh, don’t mention that” to a very positive “Have you thought about Sharepoint?”.

2009:  Without pushing an immature and unknown product, we have continued advising our customers, taking care to avoid overstepping the mark by defining their corporate strategies for them.  Nevertheless, it is not overstating things to say that, today, Sharepoint can be considered a vital building block for any project that impinges on any of the following business areas:

• Collaboration
• Portal
• Search
• CMS
• Forms, business process
• Decisional

Obviously, such confidence, from either our developers or our customers, can only be based on a product that is both robust and extremely effective. In just a few months, we have developed numerous applications and routines enabling us to complete the platform and thus offer really high-performance solutions to our customers.

So what have we learned?

It is probably prudent not to jump feet first into using new products – release 3 being the point where the product achieves stability.

Sharepoint is already, or will certainly become, a major player in your information systems.

Yes, we love Sharepoint – and we are eagerly waiting for the 2010 version – but that will be another story!