By Yakov Fain  I recently gave a presentation on Flex frameworks at the New York Flex Users Group. More than 50 people showed up, which proves that this is an important topic. By the end of the presentation the temperature in the room had increased because an innocent talk had turned into a heated di... Aug. 4, 2008 09:00 AM Reads: 1,010 |
By Yakov Fain  Friday is a big day for people having urge to get a hold of the new iPhone 3G. 8AM. Sharp. Apple stores open their doors and those who didn't mind waiting in line for a couple of days (in Hawaii people formed lines 6 days ago) will get this baby. Jul. 12, 2008 12:45 PM Reads: 2,494 Replies: 1 |
By Yakov Fain Food Dial is not just a book of recipes. Here's the big idea - you came back home, tired and hungry. Start the Food Dial application and open the fridge. Here's the red pepper. Turn the dial with food categories... Jul. 7, 2008 12:45 PM Reads: 2,127 Replies: 1 |
By Yakov Fain Flex is a great way to introduce rich Internet applications to your enterprise. However, in the real world, you often have to do it gradually. Most business units of any enterprise that are sold on RIA would prefer adding Flex-based components to their old but working Web 1.0 applicati... Jun. 30, 2008 10:00 AM Reads: 3,177 |
By Yakov Fain In the mid nineties, IT job market was good. PowerBuilder or Visual Basic plus SQL would get you employed in no time. Good old client/server days. Two programming languages was all you need. When multi-tier architecture became hot and J2EE came into picture, all of a sudden you'd have... Jun. 18, 2008 07:30 PM Reads: 2,329 Replies: 1 |
By Yakov Fain  I'll be speaking at the SOA World Conference in NYC this Monday on using rich Internet applications as service consumers in SOA architecture. As the conference faculty member, I can invite a small number of people to attend it for free (Golden Pass). If you'd like to use this offer, ju... Jun. 18, 2008 03:45 PM Reads: 1,598 |
By Yakov Fain  If you are planning to hit the job market, you may need to refresh some of the Java basic terms and techniques to prepare yourself for a technical interview. JDJ Enterprise Editor Yakov Fain here offers thirty of the core Java questions that you might expect during the interviews, 20 f... Jun. 17, 2008 06:00 AM Reads: 749,768 Replies: 176 |
By Yakov Fain I received an email stating that AOL finally abandoned the ugly Java applet that was used in the ICQ2Go, the Web version of the hugely popular (about 30M users) instant messaging system. The person who sent me this email also wrote, 'IMO this was the last popular Java applet. Now the k... Jun. 15, 2008 06:00 AM Reads: 3,989 Replies: 6 |
By Yakov Fain Keynotes are often boring, but watching today's keynote from WWDC conference was just great. I do not want to repeat the facts about iPhone 3G. Needless to say that I'll buy a couple of them this summer. I do not want to bore you with the facts about the countless possibilities that op... Jun. 12, 2008 04:00 AM Reads: 5,894 Replies: 1 |
By Yakov Fain Yesterday I realized that Friday's calendar was wide open, so I decided to take the Adobe Flex 2 Developer Exam. I knew plenty of other ways to kill a Friday, but I had to take this exam. I had no choice. May. 30, 2008 11:45 PM Reads: 3,564 |
By Yakov Fain  Adobe has published their first plan of what should be included in Flex 4 that is scheduled to release next year. Since Flex is an open source product, you have a say in this too. Obviously, there's a hope that upcoming Thermo release will bring together developers and designers. I'm c... May. 29, 2008 11:15 AM Reads: 12,302 Replies: 3 |
By Yakov Fain The popular code generator Clear Data Builder will become available free of charge. Originally, Clear Data Builder was released as a command-line open source code generator a.k.a. DaoFlex. We've submitted it to Adobe Flex component exchange about two years ago, and it quickly became on... May. 29, 2008 11:15 AM Reads: 3,347 |
By Yakov Fain I like reading stuff in pdf format. But it's even better if you can easily create pdf files. By easily I mean a button click. Literally.Since I have Adobe Acrobat, my Microsoft Word and PowerPoint just have an extra menu to create it. But it's kinda boring. Let me share with you a cou... May. 28, 2008 10:15 PM Reads: 7,440 Replies: 3 |
By Yakov Fain I spent last week in India attending the Great Developer Indian Summit (GDIS) that took place in Bangalore, in the Institute of Science, one of the most prestigious graduate schools in the country. May. 27, 2008 02:00 PM Reads: 4,240 Replies: 1 |
By Yakov Fain In today's cooking class you'll add to your cookbook a delicious recipe. It's quick and won't cost you a dime. I'm sure you've been in one of these situations when you have unexpected guests arriving in 20 minutes and need to make a good impression. Let's create an application that ... May. 19, 2008 03:00 PM Reads: 9,235 |
By Yakov Fain Flex 2 was released in the Summer of 2006 and it was a mini-revolution in the RIA space. Almost nobody knew about Flex 1.5, but now almost everyone has at least heard about this software. Flex 3 was released in early 2008. It has a number of useful new features, but it was not a major ... May. 7, 2008 07:00 AM Reads: 5,115 |
By Yakov Fain Many young programmers don't read books anymore. They google. They argue, 'When I need to find a solution it's just a click away. Why bother purchasing books that are outdated by the time of printing? Real programmers learn by doing - trial and errors'. I do not agree with this. May. 2, 2008 10:15 AM Reads: 5,179 |
By Yakov Fain I know, it's not nice and I should behave as if it's not that important to me, but I can't. During the last two and a half years I've been writing, openly speaking, whistle-blowing, and whispering that AJAX is a wrong way to go for developing rich Internet application. But 99% of the s... Apr. 28, 2008 11:30 AM Reads: 5,122 Replies: 1 |
By Yakov Fain The real bummer is that Java 6 is not there. Who should we blame for it? Steve Jobs who openly states that nobody uses Java anymore? There are about 5 million professional Java developers around the world. Can you give them a good reason to buy MacBook Pro? I can't. Apr. 19, 2008 09:45 PM Reads: 20,309 Replies: 5 |
By Yakov Fain  Vectors supporting types are the part of next release - and are billed more of performance/coding help then language enhancement. Most of the Java 5 constructs are not really applicable to ActionScript 3 - for fair comparison you need to use Java 7/8 with dynamic scripting language sup... Apr. 10, 2008 09:15 AM Reads: 6,378 |
By Yakov Fain This was the first time I've included into the list of the RIA players a little known product called Curl. Even though this language was created in MIT, it's mainly used in Japan. I had a chance to spend an hour with Curl folks today, and it seems that this language may be a good fit ... Apr. 7, 2008 09:00 AM Reads: 8,745 |
By Yakov Fain This caught me by surprise. Isn't it a bit too soon? One of the most interesting features of this Flex release is configurable modules. This new release also features lots of new controls. I like the grooved panels. The Web site to promote the new Flex is done in Flex too (finally!). Apr. 1, 2008 07:00 AM Reads: 4,772 |
By Yakov Fain  Fast-spreading rich Internet applications require new skills for development of what was known as boring-looking enterprise applications. In the past, development of the user interface was done by software developers to the best of their design abilities. A couple of buttons here, a gr... Mar. 30, 2008 08:30 AM Reads: 12,977 Replies: 5 |
By Yakov Fain These days RIA tools are created mainly to two groups of people: Web Developers and UI Designers. The second group is represented by creative people who can design screens but are not programmers. Big guys are trying to come with tools that would bring together these two groups of peop... Mar. 17, 2008 02:15 PM Reads: 6,643 Replies: 2 |
By Yakov Fain  Sun Microsystems is a very respectful company, with strong engineering spirit and talented software developers on staff. Sun Microsystems was the company behind the very first technology to support rich Internet applications. Yes, I'm talking about Java applets that were introduced in ... Mar. 11, 2008 12:45 PM Reads: 7,213 Replies: 1 |
By Yakov Fain These are the notes from Adobe Education Designer and Developer Conference that Adobe put together for people who are teaching Adobe software at various universities around the country. Mar. 5, 2008 01:00 AM Reads: 5,043 |
By Yakov Fain  Eighteen months ago Flex 2 was released, which literally changed the way people think of rich Internet applications. Since then lots of things have happened in the Flex community. In 2007 Adobe announced that Flex will go open source, and now it has happened. All ActionScript 3 and Ja... Feb. 25, 2008 10:00 AM Reads: 15,266 |
By Yakov Fain  If you are starting a new AJAX project, I highly recommend that you watch the video of a presentation made by an expert AJAX developer Joseph Smarr from Plaxo. Joseph is very experienced AJAX developer, and if after watching this presentation you don't get goose bumps, go ahead and sta... Feb. 22, 2008 07:00 PM Reads: 3,660 |
By Yakov Fain Parleys.com is a great Web site with lots of recoded videos of technical presentations on a wide variety of Java-related topics. While the original version of Parleys has been created in AJAX, more advanced Flex and AIR versions are now available too. I had a chance to chat with a man... Feb. 18, 2008 07:00 PM Reads: 8,687 |
By Yakov Fain OK, car manufactures go Flex. Will they lose or gain customers because of that? Car manufacturers want to have fancy consumer sites. It's a world of RIA, and having interactive Web sites should bring more people to car dealerships. But poorly performing Web site can turn into lost rev... Feb. 16, 2008 01:15 PM Reads: 6,406 Replies: 2 |
By Yakov Fain This is the first in a series of articles that will cover best practices of Flex development using the code of the soon-to-be-released open source class library theriabook. These components were developed by Flex and Java architects from Farata Systems. Over the past couple of years we... Feb. 14, 2008 02:45 AM Reads: 13,643 |
By Yakov Fain We are entering an era of Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and many enterprise development managers are facing the dilemma - which way to go - remain with tried and true Java or .NET technologies or less known (as yet) yet AJAX, Flex, OpenLaszlo... Feb. 10, 2008 11:15 AM Reads: 42,916 Replies: 4 |
By Yakov Fain One of the best Java IDEs on the market may become a valid Flex Builder alternative later this year. I can make a wild guess that I'll be seriously considering switching to IntelliJIDEA 8.0 by the end of 2008 unless Adobe will make some major investments in Flex Builder. Feb. 7, 2008 08:30 AM Reads: 7,272 |
By Yakov Fain Flex is an open source product, which means that you can fix the bugs on your own. This may fork out the product, but that's another story altogether. On the other hand, developers can vote for the bugs so the Flex team can fix them. I remain cautiously optimistic that Flex team will b... Feb. 7, 2008 06:45 AM Reads: 5,871 |
By Yakov Fain Action Message Format (AMF) is a protocol that is used to serialize the data coming into Flash Player or going out to other programming environments that need to communicate with Flash Player. Say, if you create in Java an instance of the class MyOrder, this instance can be converted i... Feb. 4, 2008 11:30 AM Reads: 5,023 Replies: 1 |
By Yakov Fain The Adobe Flex enterprise market picks up really fast, and it's obvious that the need for Flex developers will only get bigger and bigger. The question is what kind of Flex developers are in huge demand. I'll share with you the experience of our company, but first, let's look at the d... Feb. 4, 2008 11:30 AM Reads: 7,065 |
By Yakov Fain Unless your Flex 2 project has to go to production this month, switch to Flex 3. Now. Flex 3 final Beta days are almost over and it brings you lots of goodies. If you are still thinking of using AJAX or JSF for your data intensive business application, just stop it, will you! Just take... Feb. 1, 2008 02:45 PM Reads: 8,986 |
By Yakov Fain I ran into an interesting blog written by a Flash programmer who feels that Adobe's promotion of Flex puts him and other Flash programmers at a disadvantage. And he knows how to resist! Jan. 31, 2008 04:00 PM Reads: 8,452 |
By Yakov Fain  Creating reporting applications in AJAX is often more challenging than developing data entry CRUD applications. Reporters usually need to process lots of data, preferably on the client side to minimize the amount of information that goes through the wire. Reporters need to know how to ... Jan. 15, 2008 07:30 AM Reads: 12,726 |
By Yakov Fain  The main concern of any project manager is if there are enough people in the pool of Flex developers to staff the project. Yes, there is a pool of Flex developers, but let's look at the creature called 'Flex Developer' under the microscope. If you are considering adding Flex to your se... Jan. 15, 2008 07:15 AM Reads: 13,354 |
About Newsfeeds / Video Feeds
Yakov Fain is a managing principal of Farata Systems, consulting, training and product company. He has authored several Java books, dozens of technical articles. SYS-CON Books released his latest co-authored book , "Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex and Java: Secrets of the Masters" in Spring 2007. Sun Microsystems has nominated and awarded Yakov with the title Java Champion. He leads the Princeton Java Users Group. Yakov teaches Java and Flex 2 part time at New York University. He is an Adobe Certified Flex Instructor and an Editor-in-Chief of Flex Developers Journal. 
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