Articles

Interaction Happens: Prototyping Techniques
Do you prototype your GUIs? Should you? A great prototype can help work out the kinks in the flow of a GUI. But it can also get rushed into production as a seemingly (but not really) ready product, if you do too good a job of showing how your app will work. In this installment of "Interaction Happens," Jonathan Simon surveys the range of prototype options available to the GUI developer. Aug. 23, 2005

Interaction Happens: Thinking Graphically
Some applications make perfect sense to the developer, but not to the end user. Are you thinking of your GUIs in terms of what the developer needs, what the application needs, or what the user needs? In this installment of "Interaction Happens," Jonathan Simon shows how to "think holistically" about your GUI. Jul. 12, 2005

Pixel Pushing
Users of desktop applications are demanding--something as simple as a misplaced or misaligned pixel is unacceptable to some users. So it's up to you to get things exactly right. But is this practical, and how do you do it? Jonathan Simon shows a process for analyzing, coding, and testing your GUI for pixel perfection, demonstrating it with a pixel-accurate mimicry of a Windows-specific icon. Jun. 7, 2005

Developing Clients with Simulated Servers
Multi-tier systems can create chicken-and-egg headaches--how do you develop a client when the back end's not ready? If the servers are expensive and difficult to set up and maintain, how do you keep them up and running for development? Jonathan Simon says: you don't. Instead, you simulate parts of your system, making simple simulators adhere to the interfaces the real servers will use. Oct. 19, 2004

Developing Swing Components Using Simulators
It's difficult to expose GUI components to testing, and in the worst case, tightly coupled components aren't seen or tested until their surrounding application is ready. Jonathan Simon says there's a better way, and it's called the "simulator." Jun. 23, 2004

Rethinking Swing Threading
Dealing with potentially slow actions like network activity or database access in Swing GUIs generally leads to an unresponsive GUI or unreadable code. Jonathan Simon presents a new event-driven approach that can fix both. Oct. 24, 2003

Scripting with Jython Instead of XML
Instead of using XML to script your Java applications, consider using an actual scripting language, such as Jython. Jun. 10, 2003

Weblogs

Community One, a shock about NetBeans, and a dose of humor: I've never been a huge fan of NetBeans. So what I'm about to say may suprise you.
Posted by jonathansimon on May 08, 2007 at 10:52 PST | Permalink | Discuss (1)  

How I got here: I told you guys that I moved from Swing to ME. Now that I'm here at JavaOne, I wanted to take a step back and explain that change and how I got here. This might give you an idea about what you can expect my blogs to be about while I'm here.
Posted by jonathansimon on May 07, 2007 at 14:08 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Heading to JavaOne!: It's been a long time since I made a public appearance here at java.net- so I wanted to fill you all in and let you know I'll be hanging at JavaOne next week, blogging and schmoozing in the standard fashion. See you all there!
Posted by jonathansimon on May 04, 2007 at 10:07 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Hey, Jonathan... where you been?: I've been flying under the radar on Java.net for a while. I wanted to let everyone know where I am and about my new gig working for CollabNet on the Sun Grid community site.
Posted by jonathansimon on July 18, 2006 at 14:35 PST | Permalink | Discuss (3)  

Killing your users: What happens when software goes wrong in the worse possible way, and what you can learn from it.
Posted by jonathansimon on March 14, 2005 at 12:08 PST | Permalink | Discuss (3)  

Bad Design: A really good example of really bad design.
Posted by jonathansimon on February 04, 2005 at 10:30 PST | Permalink | Discuss (8)  

A death march to the tune of 1/2 billion dollars and US national security:

We've been at this software game for some time now. We should be able to get it right by now. But we dont. Even when its major taxpayer money and national security at stake.

Refactoring can be a dangerous word: Be careful how terms are used, to keep them from getting hijacked.
Posted by jonathansimon on January 05, 2005 at 14:08 PST | Permalink | Discuss (2)  

Paul Graham and Java?: Is Paul Graham, a very open and strong opponent of Java, using it himself?
Posted by jonathansimon on November 29, 2004 at 11:39 PST | Permalink | Discuss (9)  

Sun's MP3 Plugin released!: Sun finally released an official pure Java MP3 plugin.
Posted by jonathansimon on November 11, 2004 at 16:19 PST | Permalink | Discuss (17)  

"The JavaOne Effect": Is there such a thing as post JavaOne hype?
Posted by jonathansimon on July 15, 2004 at 05:13 PST | Permalink | Discuss (2)  

Brainf***, another useless language diversion: For all you who love whitespace as much as I do, here is another completely useless language.
Posted by jonathansimon on July 07, 2004 at 05:53 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

Swing apps, even demos, should always look good: If Sun wants to forward the perception that Java works great on the desktop, they can't show bad applications in front of 15,000 people.
Posted by jonathansimon on July 01, 2004 at 13:01 PST | Permalink | Discuss (21)  

New UI Stuff in Tiger -- Rock on!: I was pretty impressed with some of the UI stuff I saw at the keynote this morning. Thought I'd share some thoughts...
Posted by jonathansimon on June 28, 2004 at 16:09 PST | Permalink | Discuss (12)  

JDIC misses the big picture: Sun has come out with JDIC to make moving from a web context to a rich client easier. Much as I support the move, it doesn't help all that much and I'm afraid that Sun is missing the point... again!
Posted by jonathansimon on June 03, 2004 at 10:24 PST | Permalink | Discuss (12)  

Swing: People still aren’t getting it!: I’ve been interviewing people for a Swing spot lately, and what I’ve been seeing is pretty disheartening. What is it that keeps people from being good at Swing?
Posted by jonathansimon on May 10, 2004 at 14:23 PST | Permalink | Discuss (63)  

Office Absurdity 1: Three coworkers: Let’s face it, work places are crazy. We all deal with it, so we might as well have a good time. This blog series presents great stories from my work and others’ to dull the pain… enjoy!
Posted by jonathansimon on January 13, 2004 at 08:55 PST | Permalink | Discuss (2)  

RedDotNet - A cool product: I was just in Barnes and Noble tonight (rare for me to be in a "real" store these days) and I was looking at CDs. I saw this really cool thing for previewing CDs called RedDotNet.
Posted by jonathansimon on October 20, 2003 at 19:47 PST | Permalink | Discuss (6)  

Don't forget to read about usability: Use the writings of the usability field to help you understand usability better.
Posted by jonathansimon on August 05, 2003 at 06:55 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

We have to make Swing UI's not suck: We can't be excited about an application just because its written is Swing. To make the community take Swing applications seriously, they have to rock!
Posted by jonathansimon on July 30, 2003 at 14:02 PST | Permalink | Discuss (26)  

To chat/blog or not to chat/blog: This article from the New York Times talks about InstantMessaging and Blogging in lectures and classrooms - questioning the future of socially norms. As a community that is based in technology (and blogging) I wonder where our community draws the line:
Posted by jonathansimon on July 25, 2003 at 06:12 PST | Permalink | Discuss (3)  

Java VM Management, a modest proposal...: Some problems with the JVM installer and launching and how it could be fixed by introducing a java management application...
Posted by jonathansimon on July 17, 2003 at 08:05 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

Whats up with the JavaSound team?: I used to think it was a team... turns out its just one guy.
Posted by jonathansimon on June 16, 2003 at 11:44 PST | Permalink | Discuss (22)  

JRE included with hardware: Whats up with IBM?
Posted by jonathansimon on June 11, 2003 at 17:05 PST | Permalink | Discuss (12)  

Are Java Technologies Themselves Segmenting The Java Community?: Sun is telling us that the Java community needs to be unified for Java to succeed. But the JSRs themselves are often geared towards only specific segments of the community. This is in direct conflict with the whole community push.
Posted by jonathansimon on June 11, 2003 at 16:59 PST | Permalink | Discuss (1)  

Java Rich Clients, Web Apps, and the "Corporate Developer": Sun just announced that HP and Dell will be shipping a new(ish) JVM on all PCs and Mobile devices. It's clear that Sun wants Java on the client to succeed, but not doing what it takes to get there.
Posted by jonathansimon on June 11, 2003 at 10:10 PST | Permalink | Discuss (6)  

Canoooooooooo: I just had a chat with the folks at the canoo booth. Canoo has a product called ULC "Rich Clients For J2EE. " this allows you to write swing apps that reside on a server and run on a client...
Posted by jonathansimon on June 10, 2003 at 17:53 PST | Permalink | Discuss (2)  

Disconnected thoughts on new J2se 1.5 features...: I just sat through several sessions on the new features in J2SE 1.5 as well as 1.4.2. Here are some disconnected thoughts on what I've heard....
Posted by jonathansimon on June 10, 2003 at 17:31 PST | Permalink | Discuss (1)