Illustrating JavaScript freedom... 
Just added a JNEXT screen shots page to illustrate just how simple it is to add local SQLite3 database browsing to Web pages using JavaScipt and JNEXT or to add directory traversal directly from within your Web page - again only using JavaScript and JNEXT. I hope to add more samples as they become available - this is the best way I know of to show the ridicuous simplicity of creating applications with native capabilities and Web browser UI firepower.

The next milestone is finishing the JNEXT security infrastructure. This stage is necessary for JNEXT to be safe to use on public sites, and will require a lot of scrutiny so it will probably take a while - stay tuned...




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JNEXT continues... 
Finally got some time to make some more progress with JNEXT:
  1. To make the JNEXT source code light and simple I've decided to remove from the JNEXT code base all the extensions that require linking to a large 3rd party library and replaced them with extensions that have the same functionality but use self contained code. So for accessing SQlite3 databases from JavaScript I've replaced the existing extension that used the soci database abstraction library with a simple SQlite3 wrapper, and instead of using the large PWLib library to get socket functionality for JavaScript, I replaced the implementation of the JNEXT socket extension to use a light weight cross platform socket wrapper.

  2. The code base hierarchy has been reorganized to accommodate the above and is now much smaller

  3. All the unnecessary Mozilla header files were removed from the JNEXT NPAPI plugin project. There were zillions of them and removing them made things look much nicer...

  4. Finally implemented in the JNEXT npruntime plugin a thread synchronization mechanism using X11 message passing on Linux systems. This was long overdue since its the only legitimate way to pass an event from native code that runs the JNEXT code on a separate thread back to the browser UI thread. In Windows this is easy but I had little experience using X11 functions to achieve the same functionality. So now the JavaScript socket sample works in Linux on Firefox 3, but creates an X11 error when tested with the Opera browser. This is probably due to the fact that Opera uses the Qt library which perhaps does some other sort of message handling - will need to look into this later

  5. A new JNEXT extension project sample has been added named Directory. This sample illustrates how you can traverse the file system from a Web page using JNEXT (on Windows, Linus and Mac OS/X)

  6. A new bazaar branch was created that contains the new and compact JNEXT sources with the above improvements. To get the code, you need to install bzr and then at a command prompt type the following:
    bzr branch http://jnext.org/core jncore


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JavaScript bar and pie charts 
Not directly related to JNEXT, but thought this might benefit various JavaScript/Web developers. I wanted but couldn't find a simple but solid JavaScript charting object on the net for creating pie charts and bar graphs so as usually happens in these situations I made my own. It is based on a slightly modified version of Walter Zorn's fantastic JavaScript graphics library and is built in such a way that you just pass the values and JavaScript does all the dirty cosmetic work for you (just view the source to see how simple it is).

To see a sample, just click here

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RIA technology roundup 
Since it seems that every time I look there's yet another big company that is joining the RIA technology party, I've compiled the ones I'm aware of today. I hope to soon compile a more detailed comparison table of the various technologies (including JNEXT)

Name Company Link
FLEX, AIR Adobe http://www.adobe.com/products/air/
SilverLight Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/
Google Gears Google http://gears.google.com/
Prism Mozilla http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Prism
JavaFX Sun http://www.sun.com/software/javafx/index.jsp
BrowserPlus Yahoo http://browserplus.yahoo.com/


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So, where's the next version ? 
Everyday dynamics has left me with little time to devote to closing a release, also there has been a lot of progress in adding support for additional infrastructure.

For those who would like to get a taste of 1.0.8 you can compile the sources - download the sources using bazaar as follows:

bzr branch http://jnext.org/src jnext


In case you're wondering what "additional infrastructure" is - its an implementation of jnext over flash. A proof of concept has been made and now what is left is to glue the pieces together.

so, sorry for the delay, but it will be worth it in the end


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