The Authoring Tool

WARNING: This blog entry was imported from my old blog on blogs.sun.com (which used different blogging software), so formatting and links may not be correct.

We lifted the veil on the new designer tool for JavaFX last week at the JavaOne 2009 conference. Here's a screenshot:



The tool made a number of appearances:

• First in the Tuesday keynote where my boss Nandini showed the basics of the tool.
  Video,
  starts at 23:08.
  
  
• Then in the mobile keynote where Eric Klein showed the multiscreen support and mobile deployment.
  Video,
  starts at the beginning.
  
  
• And finally in the Friday keynote where I got to do a longer 10 minute segment on the tool.
  Video,
  starts at 10:25.
  

The above video links just point to small chapters of each keynote; for full video replay go to
the keynote replay page.

I've scanned the blogosphere and twitter for comments on the tool and demos and the feedback is very positive.
Here's
a particularly detailed blog post with pictures and video snippets detailing the Friday demo.
Now we just need to finish the feature set, fix the bugs and polish everything! It's been a sprint for the whole team to get to this point. But we're not building a demo! We're building a product! So we're not getting much of a rest, it's right back to work to finish this thing!






(Photo by Balz Schreier)

P.S. In case you missed it, Larry Ellison from Oracle went on stage and made several comments regarding JavaFX in case the acquisition should happen - here's one article, there are many others.

P.S.2. We had our fourth annual Java Posse BOF live recording session last week. It was a blast. Dick stayed up editing and releasing
the podcast
the same night. If you're wondering what happened in the middle of the episode, where there's not much audio and a lot of laughing, that's me nearly drowning. I took a big swig of beer just as Joe made a joke; the beer went down the wrong tube, and then I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe. My eyes were runny and I had beer all over my face and chest. Pretty embarrassing but reportedly also entertaining for others! Here's a photo from our get-together at a bar afterwards:





(Photo by Toni Epple)