John Zukowski

EchoSearch is a Java-based, multi-search engine query assistant. Through its primitive interface, anyone can quickly develop queries to go against its seven predefined Web or Usenet search engines. The concept behind EchoSearch is great, and surely needed. However, execution leaves much to be desired, given other more powerful tools on the net. Setup is fairly easy after downloading the 4MB executable and the online help is provided in HTML format. Other than some invalid internal links, the help text is very useful in describing interaction with the tool and ways to improve your query results. In searching the web, asking the right question is half the battle, knowing where to ask is part of the other half. Once you have the tool setup, you can enter terms and send Echo... (more)

Where's Java Going with 6.0?

With the release of the newly renamed Java 5.0 J2SE platform, it's time to speculate on just what might be coming in Java 6.0. Given the typical 18-24 month cycle for major J2SE releases, you need to think beyond the norm and not just about new specification releases that require updated versions in the platform. Sun's Bug Database (http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/) is a good source for ... (more)

Rich User Interfaces

Most Java developers intuitively understand the advantages of using a rich Java Swing user interface instead of an HTML interface. The fact that rich user interfaces provide a better experience for the user has often been cited as the primary reason they should be employed in a particular application. In this article, however, we provide four factors that support the claim that rich user ... (more)

The Magic of Merlin

Stop the presses! Clear the rain forests! The Merlin books are coming! The Merlin books are coming! This thing is huge and the books will keep getting bigger. Forget about thin clients. The runtime class libraries alone have jumped from 13.5MB in the 1.3 release to 22MB with the new version. Looking back to the Fall of '95, the entire Java 1.0 download was less than 4MB, about one-third ... (more)

Getting a Jump into Web Services

Once upon a time, the only technologies you needed to know to develop Web applications were HTML and Perl. Nowadays, while HTML is still around, the days of using Perl for development of sophisticated Web-based applications are long gone. Sure, it can still be done, but there's a whole can of alphabet soup full of acronyms for connecting Web-based services that is the next big thing. It'... (more)