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Macworld: Java is alive and well on the Mac

Mac OS X gives Java developers unprecedented opportunities

By Daniel Steinberg, JavaWorld.com, 01/18/02

Page 3 of 4

An audience member asked Stone about multifile search and replace. He replied that refactoring has been a higher priority, but that it has been on their list of things to do for many versions and would move higher up the list if enough users requested it.

Borland has also improved Javadoc support in JBuilder 6. The IDE automatically adds the Javadoc comment template if you type /** before a method. It also warns you if code changes desynchronize the code and matching Javadoc comments.

JBuilder 6 also features support for CVS, the developer tool included with Mac OS X. A commit browser allows you to easily interact with CVS. As an additional feature, by clicking on JBuilder 6's history tab for any class, you can see the class's history and easily perform diffs to see what has changed. JBuilder 6 also includes several mechanisms for running unit tests. You can either choose JUnit TestRunner from the junit.swingui or junit.textui packages, or use Borland's own test runner.

Apple's QuickTime for Java

After surveying the audience, Michael Hopkins, an Apple QuickTime for Java (QTJ) engineer, realized he had to provide more of an introduction to QTJ than he had planned. QTJ comes pre-installed in Mac OS X, so developers can write to the API knowing that Mac OS X clients can run QTJ applications without any additional software.

Hopkins' most impressive demonstration was the new performance realized by the addition of a lightweight canvas object. Apple has hardware acceleration available for Swing applications. The QTJ engineers have added the new JQTCanvas lightweight component that allows QuickTime media to take advantage of such acceleration. Hopkins showed a demo of a movie, along with its reflected image below squashed to a third of its height, rendered more faintly and upside down. He reported performance as good (and sometimes better) as native.

Other recent enhancements to QTJ include audio, timebase callbacks, and effects. Audio improvements include asynchronous recording and playback, level metering, and support for equalizers. He also mentioned timebase callbacks, which allow you to jump to specified moments in a movie timeline. The QTJ team improved these timebase callbacks' performance by employing high-priority native threads. As for effects, you can now transition between movies in the same way that you've been able to transition between static images. You can easily create a dialog box to allow users to pass in effect parameters and view a preview picture in the dialog. Hopkins noted that future versions of QuickTime for Java will support forthcoming features such as MPEG-4.

ThinkFree's ThinkFree Office

ThinkFree president and cofounder T.J. Kang showed off the pure-Java ThinkFree Office, and discussed issues of running it on a Mac. Kang said that he was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to move ThinkFree Office to the Mac. But, he did report that ThinkFree is having difficulty getting good performance on Mac OS X. He said Apple suggested that ThinkFree turn off hardware acceleration. In addition to improving the look and feel of the product, Kang said ThinkFree also plans to move to XML-based file formats for improved portability. He also noted that most of his company's revenue comes from Mac users in Japan.

 

Improve efficiency with Visual Studio(r) 2010 Beta 2. - Microsoft

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