There is a great article over at Ajaxian on programming for the Nintendo Wii. I bought a Wii myself a few weeks back and have been having great fun with Tiger Woods golf. (It is actually my first game console) Up until down the idea of playing a game console alone did not appeal to me but the Nintendo Wii experience is amazing.
The Wii console connects to the controller or Wiimote via bluethooth and uses an accelerometer built into the wiimote to detect the location of the wiimote as well as it’s acceleration. This leads to a really interactive experience for the user.
I have been amazed by responsiveness of the Wiimote and now Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith over at Ajaxian have developed an Ajax app that uses Wiiusej to interact with the Wiimote. The Wiiusej API is a java wrapper for the C based Wiiuse library.
We then wrote a Java class that acts as a state machine for what the remote is doing. It understands the movements, which buttons are pushed, how fast you are moving the device. With this data we could build a simple darts game. With the state machine Java code, and an Applet wrapper that exposed the information, we were ready to get to the Ajax side of the house.
I came across an interesting article by Masayuki Otoshi via Java World that discusses how to execute process definitions on the client side rather than the server side. This can come into play when making AJAX calls. As AJAX is Asynchronous, it is not possible to predict the order that your callback methods will be called in. Masayuki uses J-SOFA (Java/JavaScript Services Orchestration for Actions) to overcome this.
I haven't come across J-SOFA before but it looks like it might be worth looking at for situations where the order of callback methods is important.
…an implementation of XSL-T in JavaScript, intended for use in fat web pages, which are nowadays referred to as AJAX applications.
I'm looking forward to playing around with this. I have being doing a lot of work with XSLT lately so it will be interesting to see how Google have married this with AJAX.
I have been looking at yet another great tool from Google. In true Web 2.0 style Google calendar allows people to share calendar events with on the web. They provide an API so I am going to try to integrate my public events with my web site.
On a different note, I was at another DJMG meeting last week where we discussed dynamic languages such as Ruby on Rails and Groovy. It looks like there are a lot of advantages to using these languages over the conventional Java program. Jake was able to show us how Ruby on Rails can provide you with web interface to database tables in just a few clicks. As we discussed this software works great for what 95% of web applications use J2EE for and at the end of the day this is what we usually are developing.
I just received a link in my del.icio.us inbox to this "interesting" presentation. The subject matter is very interesting in itself but the presentation style is not your run of the mill powerpoint.
The presentation discusses a very interesting point. All web2.0 developers are looking for the following: Fast Revenues Rich UI Hackable API's Communities
On the other end of the spectrum, the guys and girls developing client side "old school" applications are looking for: Fast Revenues Rich UI Hackable API's On Demand Communities
As you can see the goals of these two communities are pretty similar, it would be very beneficial for everyone to join forces to achieve the common goal.
"At the end of the day we are just talking about passing data between people".
I came across this interesting comparison of web 1.0 to 2.0 by Matthew Thomas. I think it is a very simple but true example. Web2.0 is about getting the product to Market as soon as possible and constantly improving. As Walter Higgins said, just do it anyway.
Exadel have just released a JSF editor with AJAX support.
JSF, a Web component framework, is the only standard Java Web framework,” said Richard Monson-Haefel, senior analyst for Burton Group. “AJAX, which makes Web sites more responsive, is enjoying an avalanche of grass roots support because of its portability and seamless integration with HTML. Together, JSF and AJAX offer the benefits of standardization with a rich internet experience; a combination that will be attractive to many organizations
Unfortunately, it is a bit pricey at $799 per annual subscription license. I am going to download the trial at the weekend and have a look. I have been using the exadel Studio for eclipse and found the it very good. (Thanks Colin for the recommendation on this one.) I had been looking for a good JSP visual editor plugin for eclipse for quiet a while and this seems to be one of the better ones.
On a different note, I have decided to change my hosting service to InterAdvantage. I have got a pretty good package and will be transferring over this blog to Wordpress as soon as the domain transfer goes through. I will post all new RSS feeds here before the change over.
Stephen Downey on May 8th, 2008
