My Articles and Publications

This page enumerates the articles I have published on various websites and web portals.
If you are interested in any topic and would like to deepen your knowledge about it, or if you need an article covering a particular Java technology, feel free to contact me at battlehorse at gmail dot com . I will be glad to help!

You can also take a look at my LinkedIn Public profile .

The Web Series

Google Visualization API: Deliver Graphical Data Analysis in Your Web App , published on January 28, 2009 on DevX.com .

This article describes the recently released Google Visualization API, from its basic concepts to its more advanced parts. You will learn how to embed a simple visualization component into your web pages, how to feed it with data from external sources, and finally how to implement your own data sources to add your data to the dozens of visualizations already available in the public Visualization Gallery.

JavaScript and jQuery: Web Apps as Highly Interactive as Desktop Apps , published on December 31, 2008 on DevX.com .

Use the advanced CSS features of JavaScript and jQuery to create web applications that behave and look like desktop applications, fueled by drag-and-drop, mouse selection, panning, zooming, and more.

Modern browsers have greatly improved their performances, development tools, and compatibility. Even though most web sites still adhere to the page paradigm, rendering their content as it would appear in a newspaper or book, browsers can support highly interactive applications that rival traditional desktop apps. This article demonstrates how to leverage this power using JavaScript and jQuery to deliver a new class of web applications.

Javascript as a foundation language , published on November 11, 2008 on DevX.com .

Characterized by some dubious design decisions, ambiguous syntax rules, and a troubled history, JavaScript could have been dismissed as a second-class scripting language useful only for animating web pages. However, JavaScript has matured into one of the most ubiquitous and pervasive programming languages today, currently powering complex and highly interactive web applications. With JavaScript so widely distributed and so closely tied to the user experience, JavaScript skills are mandatory if you develop web applications nowadays.

This article explains why JavaScript is perfectly suited as a core, foundation language for your web applications. It introduces the lesser known and yet most powerful JavaScript features, and demonstrates how to leverage them to increase your productivity.

OpenSocial: the power of social networks in your applications , published on May 20, 2008 on DevX.com .

OpenSocial, a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) based on standard HTML and JavaScript, simplifies the creation of web-based applications that interact with social networks. Launched by Google in November 2007, the OpenSocial APIs are supported (or in the process of being adopted) by a number of different social networks, such as orkut, MySpace, Yahoo! , hi5, and Friendster. Thanks to such broad support, a developer has to learn the APIs only once to be able to contribute applications to all these different social networks. Through OpenSocial, you will be able to interact seamlessly with your orkut communities and friends, write applications that leverage your shared interests with your friends on MySpace, and so on.

The Ruby Series

A Flickr-based Introduction to Ruby on Rails 2.0 , published March 12, 2008 on DevX.com .

This article describes how to get started with Rails 2.0, explores some of the most prominent new features, and uses them to show how to build a simple, but visually attractive, web application. Instead of the standard “create a blog in 15 minutes” example, the application demonstrated here is a useful and immersive photo browser for the popular Flickr photo sharing website. The RailTrackr page contains additional informations on the project.

OpenID and Rails: Authentication 2.0 , published April 15, 2008 on DevX.com .

This article describes what OpenID is and how it can benefit your web site development. It provides an example by demonstrating OpenID integration with the Ruby on Rails 2.0 framework.

The Eclipse Series

The Rich Get Richer: Eclipse Rich AJAX Platform Builds on RCP , published November 27, 2007 on DevX.com .

The new Eclipse Rich AJAX Platform (RAP) is a server-side platform that multiple concurrent users can access via their browsers and Eclipse RCP developers can learn in no time.

Dynamic Scripting Lands in Europa: A Profile of Eclipse Monkey , published August 14, 2007 on DevX.com .

Bring the power of JavaScript into your Eclipse workspace and learn how to make the most of it.

Use Eclipse JET to Automate Model-Driven Development Aspects , published July 3, 2007 on DevX.com .

Get the lowdown on the Eclipse JET code generator and learn how to use it to automate your development processes.

Enhance Eclipse RCP with Scripting , published May 9, 2007 on DevX.com .

JSR-223 defines various kinds of interactions between scripting languages and the Java platform. Learn how to enhance the Eclipse platform and its Rich Client Platform applications with JSR-223 scripting capabilities.

Achieving Inversion of Control with Eclipse RCP , published June 7, 2006 on OnJava.com .

This article will describe a simple way to introduce support for Dependency Injection into an Eclipse RCP application. To avoid polluting the Eclipse platform infrastructure and to transparently add the IoC framework on top of the RCP, we will use a combination of runtime bytecode manipulation techniques (using the ObjectWeb ASM library), Java classloading agents (using the java.lang.instrument package), and Java annotations.

The Plain Java Series

Design an MVC framework using annotations , published October 3, 2005 on JavaWorld.com .

This article shows how to enhance MVC by adding a new component to the game that uses annotations to provide an easier decoupling between models and views. It introduces an open source library, named Stamps, which is based upon the component and removes the burden of writing all the plumbing between models, views, and controllers when developing MVC applications.

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