WebSphere Today

Adobe has released the free, open source Flex SDK framework to enable developers
to create Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). The Flex framework provides you with
a method of creating cross-browser, cross-platform Web applications that is quick and
simple. Flex applications run in the Flash player, which is installed on the majority of
Internet-connected computers, but Flex provides you with an object-oriented
user interface framework similar to Java’s Swing. In this tutorial, develop a
Facebook application in Adobe Flex that displays a slideshow of a user’s Facebook
photo albums. The Facebook application will contain a Profile box listing all of the
user’s photo albums, each a link to a Flex slideshow of that album. The Flex application
will use the Facebook REST API to fetch the photos of the selected Facebook album and
dynamically generate the slideshow.

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JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) are staples of Web 2.0 development. In this installment of the Mastering Grails series, author Scott Davis demonstrates the native JSON and Ajax capabilities baked into the Web framework.

[Read more →]

Adobe has released the free, open source Flex SDK framework to enable developers
to create Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). The Flex framework provides you with
a method of creating cross-browser, cross-platform Web applications that is quick and
simple. Flex applications run in the Flash player, which is installed on the majority of
Internet-connected computers, but Flex provides you with an object-oriented
user interface framework similar to Java’s Swing. In this tutorial, develop a
Facebook application in Adobe Flex that displays a slideshow of a user’s Facebook
photo albums. The Facebook application will contain a Profile box listing all of the
user’s photo albums, each a link to a Flex slideshow of that album. The Flex application
will use the Facebook REST API to fetch the photos of the selected Facebook album and
dynamically generate the slideshow.

[Read more →]

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) are staples of Web 2.0 development. In this installment of the Mastering Grails series, author Scott Davis demonstrates the native JSON and Ajax capabilities baked into the Web framework.

[Read more →]

Get an overview of the Abstract User Interface Markup Language
(AUIML) Web Toolkit (AWT). Learn how the AWT makes it possible to develop Web 2.0 interfaces quickly and easily by
merging the ease-of-use and expressiveness of the AUIML visual designer with the versatility
of the Dojo toolkit. Rapid development of user interfaces is made possible thanks to the AUIML
visual editor and also because of the availability of a number of ready-to-use patterns.
Experience has shown that the combination of these two factors provide a significant increase
in productivity, and this is even more true considering the fact that, currently, there is no
comparable technology that targets a Dojo interface.

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Just because IBM WebSphere sMash simplifies Web 2.0 application development and
deployment doesn’t mean you have to scarifice clustering and high availability.
Learn how to use your WebSphere sMash application JVMs as
a cluster in IBM WebSphere Virtual Enterprise, and how the On Demand Router
component can help you easily manage request flows to these sMash applications. (IBM WebSphere Developer Technical Journal)

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Developing mobile applications can be a daunting task. With hundreds of handsets
to develop against and support, mobile application development can be time consuming and
costly. Fortunately, Yahoo! Blueprint helps alleviate this pain by providing a single
way to develop mobile applications. With Blueprint, you can author a mobile application
one time that can be targeted at mobile devices with a browser (or devices that support the
Blueprint platform), allowing you to potentially reach thousands of users. In this
tutorial you will see how to develop a weather mobile widget using the Yahoo! Blueprint
platform.

[Read more →]

Developing mobile applications can be a daunting task. With hundreds of handsets
to develop against and support, mobile application development can be time consuming and
costly. Fortunately, Yahoo! Blueprint helps alleviate this pain by providing a single
way to develop mobile applications. With Blueprint, you can author a mobile application
one time that can be targeted at mobile devices with a browser (or devices that support the
Blueprint platform), allowing you to potentially reach thousands of users. In this
tutorial you will see how to develop a weather mobile widget using the Yahoo! Blueprint
platform.

[Read more →]

Do Firefox3 and Internet Explorer 7 look different? What’s the
best way to get these browsers to behave
the same way? Should you use pixels or em values? Regular developerWorks
author Judith M. Myerson shows you how to standardize displays on Web
portals running on Firefox and IE. She gives tricks and tips for
using em values to make the job of developing the contents of portals,
including Asynchronous
JavaScript + XML (Ajax) applications, much easier.

[Read more →]

Do Firefox3 and Internet Explorer 7 look different? What’s the
best way to get these browsers to behave
the same way? Should you use pixels or em values? Regular developerWorks
author Judith M. Myerson shows you how to standardize displays on Web
portals running on Firefox and IE. She gives tricks and tips for
using em values to make the job of developing the contents of portals,
including Asynchronous
JavaScript + XML (Ajax) applications, much easier.

[Read more →]

XUL is a tried and true application framework. In fact, the recently released Firefox 3.0 is not only built using XUL, but provides a XUL runtime environment that enables any Firefox user to run other XUL applications. In this tutorial, you start to program in XUL and learn about some tools to help you develop XUL apps. Build a XUL-based blog editor as you enhance your Web development skills to build desktop apps with XUL.

[Read more →]

Wicket provides an object-oriented approach toward developing dynamic Web-based UI
applications. Because Wicket is pure Java and HTML code, you can leverage your
knowledge of
Java programming to write applications based on Wicket, dramatically reducing your development
time. This article gives you an overview of Wicket and describes how you can use
Wicket to rapidly build Web-based applications in a
non-intrusive and simplified way.

[Read more →]

You know Wikipedia, but do you know of the dozens of related sites that
provide user-generated content that is just as valuable? Many of the related sites under
the Wikipedia umbrella are very useful to Web developers. Learn how to enrich your
information space with resources beyond Wikipedia, including examples of widgets
applying data from these sites.

[Read more →]

You know Wikipedia, but do you know of the dozens of related sites that
provide user-generated content that is just as valuable? Many of the related sites under
the Wikipedia umbrella are very useful to Web developers. Learn how to enrich your
information space with resources beyond Wikipedia, including examples of widgets
applying data from these sites.

[Read more →]

Wicket provides an object-oriented approach toward developing dynamic Web-based UI
applications. Because Wicket is pure Java and HTML code, you can leverage your
knowledge of
Java programming to write applications based on Wicket, dramatically reducing your development
time. This article gives you an overview of Wicket and describes how you can use
Wicket to rapidly build Web-based applications in a
non-intrusive and simplified way.

[Read more →]

JQuery is emerging as the JavaScript library of choice for developers looking to
ease their creation of dynamic Rich Internet Applications. As browser-based applications
continue to replace desktop applications, the use of these libraries will only continue
to grow. Get to know jQuery in this series of articles that takes a look at JQuery and
how you can implement it in your own Web application projects.

[Read more →]

The Web has increasingly become a medium for showing off art. From candid snapshots
taken by an amateur photographer to professional art galleries, Web pages are primary vehicles
for displaying images. But a beautiful image is hindered–or aided–by its frame. Using a
simple JavaScript library, you can "frame" your online images beautifully and provide an
intuitive user interface along the way.

[Read more →]

The Web has increasingly become a medium for showing off art. From candid snapshots
taken by an amateur photographer to professional art galleries, Web pages are primary vehicles
for displaying images. But a beautiful image is hindered–or aided–by its frame. Using a
simple JavaScript library, you can "frame" your online images beautifully and provide an
intuitive user interface along the way.

[Read more →]

JQuery is emerging as the JavaScript library of choice for developers looking to
ease their creation of dynamic Rich Internet Applications. As browser-based applications
continue to replace desktop applications, the use of these libraries will only continue
to grow. Get to know jQuery in this series of articles that takes a look at JQuery and
how you can implement it in your own Web application projects.

[Read more →]

Unit testing is an important part of quality software development, particularly
in the agile and extreme programming development methodology. Traditionally, automated
unit testing of Web 2.0 client-side user interfaces was difficult and often not
attempted. However, Dojo provides a unit testing harness that lets you evaluate both
JavaScript functionality and the visualization of the user interface. This results in
a thoroughly tested user interface that will ultimately contain significantly fewer
bugs. This article demonstrates the main features of the Dojo Objective Harness
(DOH) and describes its superior capabilities compared with other test harnesses for Web 2.0 applications.

[Read more →]

The Semantic Web envisioned by Berners-Lee, Hendler, and Lassila in 2001 was a
grandiose vision that involved the use of agents to book doctor appointments and to find
the best driving routes with the least hassle. The envisaged system was built upon formal
ontologies that had already achieved a large following of scientists and agent developers.
Although they raised some important issues and put forward interesting connections between
technologies, they missed one thing: the fact that the Web had turned into a web of
documents. Therefore, a middle way needed to occur between the formalism of ontologies and
the informalism of documents. This is known as Linked Data. Linked Data coupled with agent
technology is an ideal way of dealing with Semantic Web data. This article provides an
overview of the Interlinked Semantic Web, agent technologies, and an example of the two
combined.

[Read more →]

Unit testing is an important part of quality software development, particularly
in the agile and extreme programming development methodology. Traditionally, automated
unit testing of Web 2.0 client-side user interfaces was difficult and often not
attempted. However, Dojo provides a unit testing harness that lets you evaluate both
JavaScript functionality and the visualization of the user interface. This results in
a thoroughly tested user interface that will ultimately contain significantly fewer
bugs. This article demonstrates the main features of the Dojo Objective Harness
(DOH) and describes its superior capabilities compared with other test harnesses for Web 2.0 applications.

[Read more →]

The Semantic Web envisioned by Berners-Lee, Hendler, and Lassila in 2001 was a
grandiose vision that involved the use of agents to book doctor appointments and to find
the best driving routes with the least hassle. The envisaged system was built upon formal
ontologies that had already achieved a large following of scientists and agent developers.
Although they raised some important issues and put forward interesting connections between
technologies, they missed one thing: the fact that the Web had turned into a web of
documents. Therefore, a middle way needed to occur between the formalism of ontologies and
the informalism of documents. This is known as Linked Data. Linked Data coupled with agent
technology is an ideal way of dealing with Semantic Web data. This article provides an
overview of the Interlinked Semantic Web, agent technologies, and an example of the two
combined.

[Read more →]

Dojo is being used more and more in Web-based applications. Many developers
have strong skills in Java programming, but only limited experience in
JavaScript. They can struggle with the conceptual leap from a strongly typed, object-oriented compilation language to
a dynamic, weakly typed scripting language. This confusion can make it difficult for
developers to correctly declare Dojo classes. This article helps clear up this
confusion, shows why it may be necessary to set context, and describes how to go about it.

[Read more →]

Dojo is being used more and more in Web-based applications. Many developers
have strong skills in Java programming, but only limited experience in
JavaScript. They can struggle with the conceptual leap from a strongly typed, object-oriented compilation language to
a dynamic, weakly typed scripting language. This confusion can make it difficult for
developers to correctly declare Dojo classes. This article helps clear up this
confusion, shows why it may be necessary to set context, and describes how to go about it.

[Read more →]