Comparing to previous version, 1.0.0, Java2Script 2.0.0 now supports both Eclipse 3.3.* and Eclipse 3.4.*. And Java2Script 2.0.0 has a new feature named “SWT Desktop“, providing Tray widget, task bar and shortcut dashboard. And there is Simple and Compound Pipe APIs to setup Comet connection back to server. Besides these new features, we have fixed lots of bugs in Java2Script compiler, Java core library and SWT library. And we add another demo: an SWT Tetris game.

Java2Script 2.0.0 is much more stable and it is ready for product. WeBuzz.IM is one of products using Java2Script 2.0.0. WeBuzz.IM provide services to those users whose Gtalk/MSN/Y!Messenger/AIM being blocked by firewalls. Compound Pipe technology is used to provide multiple IM login using only one connection, and Java2Script’s SWT desktop provides familiar desktop user experience for users.

And developer Sebastian Gurin joined us in Oct 2008.

Please let us know your thought.

Appendix (Java2Script Feature List)

Java2Script Core
—————-
1. Object oriented JavaScript simulator is introduced
2. JavaScript ClassLoader is built inside
3. Eclipse JDT based Java to JavaScript compiler, support Java 1.4 and Java 5
features, including generic, enums, static imports, enhanced loops
4. Support incremental building for Java projects
5. Support Hotspot JavaScript swapping for debugging
6. Support most classes in java.lang.*, java.utils.* and others packages
7. Support native JavaScript through @j2s* Javadoc in Java sources
8. Support creating Java2Script projects by wizard, including Servlet project
9. Support Eclipse 3.3.* and 3.4.*

Java2Script SWT
—————
1. Eclipse SWT 3.1 API is ported for JavaScript in modern browsers, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Chrome
2. Desktop and window manager are built inside
3. Support UI blocking fow SWT’s Shell and Dialog
4. Support SWT deffered layout
5. Support detecting font size change in Firefox

Java2Script AJAX
—————-
1. HttpRequest/AJAX is introduced for both Java and JavaScript
2. Simple RPC API is introduced to call back Java server, which supports Cross Site Scripting
3. Simple and Compound Pipe API is introduced to setup Comet connection to server.
4. Support dynamic class loading for both Java and JavaScript
5. Support Java reflection (early implementation)

Java2Script JUnit
—————–
1. Support JUnit tests both Test Case and Test Suite in text mode.

Java2Script Example
——————-
1. Web IM services in Java2Script ( http://demo.java2script.org/ )
2. SWT Tetris Game ( http://demo.java2script.org/tetris/ )
3. SWT Control Examples ( http://demo.java2script.org/controls/ )

For more feature detailed description, please visit:
http://j2s.sourceforge.net/features.html

There are four elements on the above screen shot: Tray Bar (left upper corner), Task Bar (left side), Quick Shortcut Bar (bottom), Window.

This is a prototype design for Java2Script Desktop. Please check it out at http://izuz.net/gtalk/ . Hope to hear your feedback.

From an interview to 280 Sliders developer, I learned to know that Cappuccino is the framework behind the product. And Objective-J language is introduced so they can port Apple’s Cocoa framework. Cocoa is a framework based on Apple’s own language Objective-C. In fact, 280 Slides’ UI looks like Apple’s Keynotes. And the 280 Sliders’ developers are former Apple developers. Cappuccino parses Objective-J files, which are with file extension .j, convert to JavaScript codes and executes them on the fly.

So, another cross compiler, Objective-C to JavaScript. It is quite worthy for further digging.

And digging into sources, I find that it uses lots of images to make up the whole UI, includes button, scrollbar, window borders and other components. And besides *.j and *.js files, there are some *.plist and *.sj files. *.sj use the same syntax as normal JavaScript. But from the sources, I guess they are compiled and mixed from *.j. Besides the core Objective-J.js, AppKit.sj, Foundation.sj and SlideKit.sj are three important files.

And it is great to hear the news that Cappuccino and Objective-J will be open-sourced at http://objective-j.org/ in the near future.

Supporting Thread programming in JavaScript would be cool. Once I spent some time trying to figure out how to support Thread in Java2Script project, but I failed. But I managed to program execute codes asynchronously by using SWT’s Display#timerExec(int, Runnable) or Display#asyncExec(Runnable) instead. So even though I can not use Thread#sleep, I still can do lots of thread things.

And Orto seems to be in a different way to support Thread, the codes it generated look like these:

case 117:orto246[orto247-2]={high:(~orto246[orto247-2].high)
&0xffffffff,low:(~orto246[orto247-2].low+1)&0xffffffff};
if(orto246[orto247-2].low==0){orto246[orto247-2].high++;
orto246[orto247-2].high&=0xffffffff;
orto246[orto247-2].low=0;
}break;

Compiling to Java code into byte-code like script, and loading and running these scripts in “JVM” should be a way to support all Java things. In my opinions, all locks and threads are re-implemented. Performance should be a problem. I know that there is another project called XML11, which is also trying to compile Java codes into JavaScript byte-code.

And recently, I also noticed that there was a debate about GWT Ext or Ext GWT. You may already know that GWT is about compiling Java to JavaScript and Ext JS is a HTML/CSS+JavaScript based UI library. It is interesting to see people combine these two technologies together. And it is more interesting that putting GWT before Ext JS and putting Ext JS before GWT is two different things. You may want ot read Didier Girard’s discussion for a clear idea.

About 2 years ago, when I started Java2Script project, I had to think about its programming model. At that time, people began to wrap existed JavaScript library in Java way. I called it “JavaScript for Java (JavaScript4Java)”, which is quite different from my “Java to JavaScript (Java2Script)”. So “2″ and “4″ is totally different, right?

In fact, I do know that Java and JavaScript are two different language. The reason that I chose Java as the source and JavaScript as the target is that Java is most beautiful and most used language while JavaScript is a world wide supported language. And I am familiar and love Java language. So I created Java2Script. I do believe that C#-to-JavaScript, Ruby-to-JavaScript or Other-to-JavaScript is not a big deal for me. But I may not have energy to make a similar compiler.

Java and JavaScript may be hotter and hotter. Good to see that more and more people is linking Java and JavaScript together.

The RAP project enables developers to build rich, Ajax-enabled Web applications by using the Eclipse development model, plug-ins with the well known Eclipse workbench extenstion points, JFace, and a widget toolkit with SWT API (using qooxdoo for the client-side presentation). The project has graduated from incubation and released its 1.0 release.

In fact, Eclipse RAP and Java2Script have a lot in common. Both are based on SWT API and have goals to provide ways for developers to share the same base of code for products that deploy to the web and the desktop. Here is overview of Eclipse RAP. And you can also read Java2Script’s overview for comparisons.

And you can also check out Eclipse RAP demo to get more details. It’s interesting to see that RAP and Java2Script have 2 very similar demos: RAP’s RWT Control Demo and Java2Script’s SWT Control Examples.

More discussion may be found at ajaxian.com.

Related link: InfoWorld Eclipse offers AJAX server

Here is Opera Mini 4’s simulator for you to test its CSS/JavaScript/AJAX compatibilities:
http://www.operamini.com/beta/simulator/

Here are screenshots:

Zoom in to get a clear look:

Login and connect:

Now we are in:

Zoom in to get a clear look on friend list:

But Java2Script Gtalk does not get run as totally correct. It fails to maintain normal connection back to Gtalk proxy server. So after a few seconds, the proxy server closes the connection. Maybe Java2Script Gtalk may fix this problem later. And also I think Opera Mini team may improve its AJAX supports in the near future so nothing need to be modified.

Please visit http://j2s.sourceforge.net/ for more information.

Feature List
==========

Java2Script Core
—————-
1. Object oriented JavaScript simulator is introduced
2. JavaScript ClassLoader is built inside
3. Eclipse JDT based Java to JavaScript compiler, support Java 1.4 and Java 5 features, including generic, enums, static imports, enhanced loops
4. Support incremental building for Java projects
5. Support Hotspot JavaScript swapping for debugging
6. Support most classes in java.lang.*, java.utils.* and others packages
7. Support native JavaScript through @j2s* Javadoc in Java sources
8. Support creating Java2Script projects by wizard, including Servlet project
9. Support loading *.js from Firefox Add-on.
10. Support Eclipse 3.1.*, 3.2.* and 3.3.*

Java2Script SWT
—————
1. Eclipse SWT 3.1 API is ported for JavaScript in modern browsers, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari
2. Window manager is built inside
3. Support UI blocking fow SWT’s Shell and Dialog
4. Support SWT deffered layout
5. Support detecting font size change in Firefox

Java2Script AJAX
—————-
1. HttpRequest/AJAX is introduced for both Java and JavaScript
2. Simple RPC API is introduced to call back Java server, which supports Cross Site Scripting
3. Support dynamic class loading for both Java and JavaScript
4. Support Java reflection (early implementation)

Java2Script JUnit
—————–
1. Support JUnit tests both Test Case and Test Suite in text mode.

Java2Script Example
——————-
1. Google Talk in JavaScript ( http://demo.java2script.org/gtalk/ )
2. SWT Control Examples ( http://demo.java2script.org/controls/ )

For more feature detailed description, please visit:
http://j2s.sourceforge.net/features.html

And Java2Script 1.0.0 Final Release will be available at the end of this September.

New and Noteworthy
==================
Java2Script Core
—————-
1. Eclipse 3.3 supported
2. Replace Java builder with Java2Script builder for Java2Script project
3. Hotspot supports for debugging.
4. Bug fixes.

Java2Script SWT
—————
1. Bug fixes.

Java2Script AJAX
—————-
1. Update Simple RPC from 1.0.0 to 1.0.1
2. Bug fixes

Java2Script Example
——————-
1. Google Talk’s Java2Script copy updated ( http://demo.java2script.org/gtalk/ ).

Even though former blog on j2s.sourceforge.net was installed with Akismet plugin, Sourceforge limits its server from connecting to Wordpress Akismet servers, which results in being unable to activate Akismet. After about-5-day-away, about 200 spam comments were piled up there. So the blog was moved.

BTW: Window Builder Pro was used to design the above UI

For more updated information, please visit http://demo.java2script.org/gtalk/.