Articles about Java

Why my Java applets took much longer to load when I upgrade to Java Runtime Environment version 7

I was looking after a couple of Java applets that are used in our private network for more than a decade. Changing business requirements mandated the upgrade of the Java Runtime Environment from version 1.5 to version 1.7. That change had caused my Java applets to load very slowly. On Java Runtime Environment version 1.7, my applets took at least 20 times longer to load.

How did this happen? Why did my Java applets took significantly longer to load when I upgraded my Java Runtime Environment to version 7? This post records how I had managed to solve the mystery and gotten my applets to run like they were on Java Runtime Environment 1.5.

Configurations that I set in my Java Control Panel to get my Java Plug-in to tell me more about the Java applets and binaries that it is running

Right after I took over the maintenance work for Java applets that are a decade old, I did an important tweak to my Java Runtime Environment: I applied some configurations for the Java Plug-in on my computer to be as verbose as possible when it had to run my Java applets.

This post shows how I had configured in my Java Control Panel in my windows machine for the sake of performing diagnostic tasks when trouble brews.

How to read values from a properties file located within a Java jar file

A good programming practice will be to code applications to read from a text file for values which are expected to change often. Java Swing applications are often packed in a single jar file and it can make deployment easier if our Java Swing applications can read from text files embedded within the same jar file that they reside in.

There came a time where I need to code a Java applet to read i18n labels from some properties files. This post documents my proof of concept before I embark in coding that Java applet.

Self-signing a Java applet

Part of my role as a system analyst involves performing enhancement works on Java applets. Recently, the company had decided to self sign all the applets in the system so that our system infrastructure colleagues can save some time when we upgrade the Java runtime version on all our client machines.

This post documents my process of self-signing a Java applet.

How to send message from Java applet to web page via jQuery

In an attempt to save development time on reworking the RIAs from a old system, a business decision was made to reuse the Java applets on a newer system.

The newer system utilizes jQuery at the front end to fulfill modern user interactivity requirements.

This post documents a proof of concept that I did for the powerful Java applets to communicate with the front-end of the newer system.

Code generator for list of countries

There was a second need for me to display a list of countries for my users to select. While the first required insertion of names of the countries into the database, the second required the list of countries to be populated as an array of data objects via Java.

Although the text list of countries from Pedro Posada is useful in both instances, it only fulfills part of what I need. In addition to the names, I need to include additional boiler plate coding to convert the text list of countries into usable forms for the two different programming requirements.

And since the list is more than a 100 items long, it will be more efficient to get the computer to generate the list of countries with the necessary boiler plate coding.

7 quotes that helped make my programming life easier

Although it is easy to write several hello worlds, programming is not always easy. In my life, I had came across inspiration quotes from famous people which had benefited me in different ways. Here are 7 quotes which I felt had helped make my programming life easier.

OSCON Java 2011: Josh Bloch, “Java: The Good, Bad, and Ugly Parts”

Chanced upon this 14 minute video where Joshua Blotch talked about his take on the design on Java. All Java people should watch it. 🙂

How to handle null database fields with Java

Content is king and large software cannot get away from serving content. In this post, I shall document how to use Java to access relational databases, with the MySQL database as an example.