Stefano Demiliani WeBlog

New Look for Firefox

Seems that the new 0.9 version of Mozilla Firefox will have a new default theme and it will also feature a new improved theme and extension management, which will make it easy to make Firefox look the way you want it to.

Great! I hope only that the new default theme will be great at least like the actual Qute theme. I love skinnable browsers!!

Visual MainWin® for the J2EETM platform

My eyes has just see this news: Mainsoft has created Visual MainWin® for the J2EETM platform, that integrates with (and requires) Microsoft Visual Studio.Net, and allows developers using Visual Basic .NET or C#, as well as ASP.NET and ADO.NET class libraries, to create, deploy, and debug applications on J2EE application servers, including IBM WebSphere 5.1, BEA WebLogic 8.1 and Tomcat 5.0. Java classes and components, such as Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) can be imported into Visual Studio and used in applications written in Visual Basic .Net or C#.

Visual MainWin is a complete development solution for J2EE that includes A development environment integrated into Visual Studio .NET that can be used to develop, deploy and debugJ2EE applications A set of Java runtime libraries that enable applications developed in Visual Basic .NET and C# to run on a J2EE application server Visual MainWin introduces a patent-pending compiler that compiles Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) into standard Java Bytecode. Developers can write programs in either Visual Basic .NET or C# and compile their source code directly into standard Java Bytecode.

A wonderful idea... a useful tool for a lot of software developers and organizations. Why MS don't start thinking on something like that for the next release of Visual Studio?

Visual MainWin for J2EE Enterprise Features:

Productivity features      Support Visual Basic .NET and ECMA-compliant C#      Drag-and-drop programming      Integrated dynamic help Runtime libraries      ASP.NET - Web applications      ASP.NET - Web services      ADO.NET - Connected and disconnected mode Import Java Components      Add references to Enterprise JavaBeans and third party Java classes      Direct access to all the JDK 1.4 classes from C# and Visual Basic.NET Web Services      Add references to Web services      Deploy Web services as Enterprise JavaBeans Deployment on J2EE Application Servers      Produce standard J2EE WAR files      Deploy projects on J2EE application servers automatically      Support BEA WebLogic® 8.1, IBM WebSphere® 5.1, Tomcat® 5 Integrated Debugger      Preserve Visual Studio debugging experience      Debug across multiple languages: Visual Basic .NET, C# and Java      Sophisticated multi-lingual expression evaluator Compliancy with Java Standards      Generated Java bytecode is fully compatible with Java 1.3 and 1.4 specifications.

Java Resource Center Opened...

I'm really happy to see that the new Java Resource Center on MSDN is opened...

This developer center provides a collection of resources for Java developers interested in interoperability, migration, and development with the .NET Framework.

I like this MS interest for the Java community (and I don't know if it's really true that the 56% of enterprises are using .NET and 44% Java as their primary development... for the Enterprise systems Java is really widespread!).

Is Caps Lock Dead?

An interesting question that comes from an anonymous posters on Slashdot:

"Recently I have noticed that I haven't used caps lock other for any purpose other than hitting it by accident. Once upon a time, COBOL was written in all caps, and other languages like BASIC and Fortran were not case sensitive. Capitals were the way to go for writing code. Does the caps lock key serve any purpose any more, and if not, should it be removed, moved, or replaced?"

Wha do you think? Are you using often the Caps Lock Key? Personally, I use the Caps Lock Key only when writing some SQL code in stored procedures and at least in some special cases when I'm writing text with Word Processors.

And you?