Ethan Nicholas

Ethan Nicholas is the lead engineer for the Yahoo! Publishing Tools team, and was the original author of the Swing-based Yahoo! SiteBuilder web design application. In his spare time he is developing JAXX, an XML-based user interface language for creating Java desktop applications.

Articles

Introducing JAXX: A New Way to Swing

Swing's great, except for the thousands of lines of manual layout, event wiring, data binding, etc. JAXX offers an alternative: an XML markup that offers faster and more intuitive ways to lay out and wire up your GUI, while still offering tremendous flexibility. Ethan Nicholas shows what's inside...

Weblogs

Introducing Java CSS

How people configure Swing today

If you've ever written a non-trivial Swing program, you've probably written code that looks a...

Java Secrets Revealed #1

I know, I know, it's been far too long since I've made an entry. My younger son is ten months old now, so I suppose I should probably stop using "new baby" as an excuse for my laziness...

...

Java Kernel Unmasked

In my last entry, I briefly introduced the major features of the upcoming Consumer JRE.

Announcing the Consumer JRE (again!)

When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone at MacWorld, Mac fans were understandably upset that no other announcements were made.

Integrate JAR files into your Windows desktop

Dieter Krachtus just sent me a link to a project he's working on, a shell extension which allows you to treat JAR files as executable...

Grown-up games

My sixteen-month-old son is just at the point where he's beginning to play tag, so it's a part of my day-to-day life now. It's fitting that I find myself tagged by...

Trying to understand really big numbers

Ok, this isn't strictly Java-related, but it's geeky enough that I hope you find it interesting regardless.

My most-used utility methods

I've been writing Java code for more than a decade now, and there are a handful of methods I've ended up copying & pasting (or, sadly, reimplementing) in virtually every program I've ever...

What you should know about Secure Static Versioning

Sun recently released a Java security advisory titled Java Plug-in and Java Web Start May Allow Applets and Applications...

"Java Browser Edition": New name, first steps

"Java Browser Edition" History

Some time ago I proposed the idea of a Java Browser Edition. The...

Welcome to the Deployment team: My first week at Sun

I mentioned in my last entry that I have left Yahoo! and am now officially a Sun employee.

So long, and thanks for everything

When you work at a major Internet company like Yahoo!, deployment is a Big Deal. You have millions of customers running every version of every OS imaginable, some with marginally working...

All about intern()

Strings are a fundamental part of any modern programming language, every bit as important as numbers.

The Great Switch

I'm on vacation with my family right now. Vacation time is pretty hard for me to come by -- one of the dangers of being "essential" is that nobody wants to let you leave -- so this is a...

JAXX: new version, long-term plans

(For an introduction to JAXX, start here.)

First things first: JAXX 1.0.1 is finally out. This version...

Mnemonic Magic

Swing's mnemonic system is based around two properties: mnemonic (or displayedMnemonic) and displayedMnemonicIndex. They're powerful enough to do everything you need,...

More deployment woes

Scott Delap (of ClientJava.com fame) just sent me a gem of an article: a Washington Post blogger...

Won Point Oh

(If you have no idea what JAXX is, take a look at Introducing JAXX)

I'm usually pretty good about hitting...

JAXX user interface language: marching towards 1.0

If you're not familiar with JAXX, it is an open-source XML language for creating Swing GUIs that I'm working on.

Understanding Weak References

Some time ago I was interviewing candidates for a Senior Java Engineer position. Among the many questions I asked was "What can you tell me about weak references?" I wasn't expecting a detailed...

Leaking Evil

Memory leaks in Java are fortunately pretty rare, and when they do exist, off-the-shelf tools like JProfiler and OptimizeIt normally make short work of them. So when I discovered that an...

Reinventing GridBagLayout

Java suffers from a layout crisis. It ships with a bunch of poorly-thought-out layout managers, a few (like GridLayout and BorderLayout) that are decent within their limited niche, and......

Creating a Service Provider Interface

While working on my XML user interface language, JAXX, I wanted to provide a mechanism for users to add support for additional tags and data types.

Java 2 Browser Edition

The problem

In my day job at Yahoo!, I face a frustrating problem: Java is the most powerful browser-based technology available, easily besting...

Style Swing components using CSS

Swing does a great job of separating data (the models) and controls (the components themselves), but it really doesn't do a good job of separating controls from presentation...

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