Teppefall Labs

For some absolutely shocking reason some people wonder why the Apple iPad comes without Java and Flash support. Personally I wonder why these people are still employed in the technology sector, but why not write down all the reasons before I get too arrogant and annoying.

- HTML5 and open standards might be seen as a reason, but it's not. Apple will always use closed Apple API's if they believe this will give the best result. Apple loves the web because it gives them access to millions of potential users who just browse Facebook and GMail all day long. Safari is an easy sell. Also, Safari is based on open source and Apple hand is more or less forced.

Continue reading "Why the Apple iPad has no Java or Flash" »

Posted by JP at 12:38 AM | Permalink

So finally the myth about the wealthy Apple user has been broken. These people spend all their money on hardware and then Apple has to smack them into legal mode with a cryptographically signed application platform.

Sure, the iPad is a very cool product. But it's basically a DRM platform for people people who claim to hate DRM. The fight against music DRM was not "won". The reason Apple removed DRM from music was because, unlike movies and software, music is something we move around with. We listen to music in the car, on our cell phone, while painting a fence and when we wake up. Music needs to be mobile and multi-platform. Music needs to be an open standard.

I don't care about DRM or no-DRM. I just build what people want and what is financially sustainable. And the iPad more or less tells us everything we need to know about the marked. And that most people are children who can't understand copyright warnings.

There is no "no-copyright" world. Only more DRM. Like Xbox, Bluray, Kindle, iPhone and iPad. The alternative story would be that 3G forces a DRM solution. But is that really the case when you run one application at a time ?

Posted by JP at 06:21 PM | Permalink

Enhanced iPhone OS instead of Snow Leopard. Logical maybe, but there are many problems with this.

No multitasking ? Uploading files while surfing the web is too fancy ? Downloading email while checking out some music in iTunes is advanced ? Working in a console while moving files ?

Does this thing only run Apple signed applications ?

People who hate the wide bezel are idiots. You totally need it.

Does this product prove that Apple users pirate music, film and software because they can't afford the hardware in the first place ? Feels a bit like a DRM platform.

The application "iBooks" looks like something from Delicious Monster.

There is no camera because why would you need one ? It would shake around like a rubber ball.

Are we all sitting like girls now ? What about people with testicles and small sofas ?

Windows 7 tablet users will make fun of it. LOL, it only runs one app at a time.

It's affordable because it has to be. If it had cost a $1000 everyone would buy a MacBook or an HP instead. If they had the money to begin with that is. The economy is weak and the credit marked tight.

Posted by JP at 04:20 PM | Permalink

JavaFX is not about integrating with Swing. JavaFX is about turning Swing into OS 9 Classic. Soon enough JavaFX will be "enhanced" with a new Swing incompatible rendering engine and the divide will be complete. The Java Store DRM platform works as a legacy launcher and as a public relations move. This is why JMediaPane is gone, the JavaFX designer late and why the whole thing is based on Web Start. Swing will get access to JavaFX through some ass backwards API.

What's pretty funny about this whole drama is that Microsoft is backing down from their "pure WPF/Silverlight" mantra. Because almost all their internal developers are pissed off by msbuild and slower than Java Swing bootup time. WPF is pretty and simple, but heavy and hard to debug when something goes wrong. Read something somewhere about binding logic creating new types of memory leaks as well.

Here is the dirt from Oracle. Check out "Java" and "Developer Tools".

Sure, Oracle will still support Swing and add features. It just looks like one part of Sun is trying to get another part of Sun fired. How do you else explain SwingComponent.wrap() and JXScene ?

Posted by JP at 10:46 AM | Permalink

I think it's going to be based on the Apple Air, because of the battery design, with a big chunk of either SSD or generic Flash storage. With some new form of virtual keyboard layout. And a few extra touch moves.

The reason Java is not on the iPhone has little to do with Java and everything to do with Cocoa Touch being a fork without all the crufty Carbon stuff which still lies underneath Cocoa. And Flash was banned too because Flash 10 has privacy issues (advertising trackers) and uses way too much CPU. An iPhone with Flash would survive 12 hours, or something like that, if the user was a fan of Youtube. People would be mad as hell and blame Apple. Apple will probably use HTML5, Animated PNG/MNG/SVG and CSS3 as a replacement.

Continue reading "Speculating on the Apple tablet" »

Posted by JP at 03:42 PM | Permalink

Ehm. Sorry about that mental image if you a synonym person.

I love the web. Love it. But spending my life in web apps all day long sounds like a nightmare. This because Internet bandwidth and Javascript speed is not the problem. People see YouTube and suddenly think it's like TV, except it's not. And people see "web apps" and think they're like other apps. And for many people Facebook is "the killer app". But the thing is that the biggest problem in computing is latency. And 3G sucks at latency. And yet mobile computing and cloud computing is seen as the future.

Continue reading "Web apps are not apps, they're well-oiled DRM" »

Posted by JP at 02:53 AM | Permalink

Go check it out at http://teppefall.no. Very sparse, but developing software takes time. The underlying tech is more interesting though. This is the first Teppefall system based on Xen and hot deployment. Still using dedicated hardware, but trying to reduce cost. So far the experience has been rather bad because of tons of SSH problems. Hopefully this will be resolved.

Posted by JP at 06:21 PM | Permalink

Supporting 64bit is not very important when most of your code is in Java. But Teppefall does have around 300kb of C++ that needs to be ported. And the process is something like this.

• Install crazy big Windows SDK and Visual Studio on Windows 7.


• Realize that the Windows documentation is wrong when it comes to "vcvarsall.bat amd64".


• Dig around for a while.


• Find the correct BAT based configuration files and drag them into the application menu.


• Create custom makefiles.


• Scratch your head as Microsoft uses the suffix "32" in paths and library names everywhere.


• More mind numbingly boring rewriting of makefiles.


• Everything compiles, but Winsock related code is broken. Might be configuration. Might be worse.


• Realize that 64bit JRE writes a registry JVM value that points to a non-existent file. My fault ?


• But the code supports that, so just use TEPPEFALL_JVM variable.


• Success!

Posted by JP at 12:46 AM | Permalink

Release notes 2.6
The old theme is still supported, but you must now add a parameter to activate it. On Windows you use the parameter -Xgraphite and on OS X you must follow the instructions inside the Info.plist file. You only get the old advanced color panel by choosing this theme.
Tiger support is solid, but Leopard and Snow Leopard users might have problems if they have incompatible system wide settings. This is a result of Apple choosing to lock the JRE to the OS X version. This makes it harder to test multiplatform software.
The Colorspace Hue value is not RGB compatible. This is not a bug. The color logic used internally is based on RYB (red-yellow-blue). This has no effect on the color picker.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RYB_color_model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Color_star-en.svg

Native LAF logic is being rewritten
-Xlaf=org.jvnet.substance.skin.SubstanceOfficeSilver2007LookAndFeel

Happy holidays and a happy new year!

Posted by JP at 06:04 PM | Permalink

Platespiller.net is a 100 percent meta-music service based on web services. This means that Teppefall depends 100% on external content providers and that the service can be altered or shut down at any moment.

Basically, this is just an experiment. It's all about learning new things. Platespiller.net is targeted at the Scandinavian marked. The idea is to think of music as social objects that move from friend to friend through the social web. There are no plans to support Facebook or Myspace integration.

This product is a work in progress.

Spotify links
http://platespiller.net

Twitter search
http://open.platespiller.net/twitter?q=%23nowplaying

Posted by JP at 11:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The volume component gives it away. But Silverlight 4 may change that.

Posted by JP at 10:54 AM | Permalink

By being hell bent on "finishing" JavaFX instead of augmenting Swing Sun has more or less destroyed their credibility as a desktop platform company. The reality is that Swing plus a scene graph, accelerated layers and a new media framework is more valuable than the entire JavaFX ecosystem. Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, Opera, Mozilla and Google all believe that XML is the future of layout and yet Sun believes a non-standard syntax based on Lisp and JSON is the way to go. And the fact that C#, Actionscript, Dalvik and Javascript are all Java clones seems to indicate that Java is just fine as a user interface language. Adobe even exports twine animation code as XML and vectors as SVG. I sit here working in Adobe Creative Suite and wonder what Sun is thinking.

Continue reading "Sun is missing out on a huge opportunity" »

Posted by JP at 10:54 PM | Permalink

You can now compare the Swing JMC system with the WPF and Qt equivalents. These Windows programs are beta quality and not feature complete. The big problem here is of course that the latest version of JmediaPane is not available to anyone outside the big castle surrounded by fire breathing dragons. And therefore bug reports and general feedback is just a colossal waste of time.

Continue reading "WPF MediaElement and Qt Phonon demos released" »

Posted by JP at 09:22 AM | Permalink

Testing out the new Substance 5.3 Gemini theme (SubstanceGeminiLookAndFeel). Looks pretty good. Now supported through executable parameter -Xgemini.

Posted by JP at 01:05 AM | Permalink

This is the latest MP prototype. Since JmediaPane is nowhere, I'm experimenting with forms and other boring things. Everything is scalable and the application can be broken down into small visual parts without compromising usability.

I'm using MigLayout for forms, CardLayout BorderLayout FlowLayout GridLayout BoxLayout AssemblyBoxLayout for center panels and Teppefall Layout assemblies make up each individual panel. I then just update one panel at a time in TL. Most of the layout code was written almost two years ago, but TL makes reuse very simple.

The clue behind this application is that almost all the UI layout code is in XML. I just use TL for visual and i18n updates. The idea that JavaFX syntax will make layout easier sounds completely delusional to me. The reason people use XML is because XML is a data format. My TL assemblies are just like Apple's NIB/XIB. And Teppefall Hybrid is sort of my version of Cocoa NSApplication.

The text should probably be a little bigger though. Swing application text looks tiny compared to WPF.

Posted by JP at 12:36 AM | Permalink

Hybrid is a component API for developing Swing applications. Instead of writing Java code from the start, you simply write a layout file and an application manifest file. Both are XML files. You then export the user interface assembly in Teppefall Layout and start adding Java or Javascript code. The application manifest format is almost identical to Adobe AIR application.xml files.

You only need Java skills if you want to deploy in a web browser. Compiling Javascript is possible, but dependency problems might bite you in the ass later on. Rhino changed their threading model once and that really confused the heck out of me.

Teppefall SDK 20091019 (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris)

Continue reading "Teppefall Hybrid released" »

Posted by JP at 05:06 PM | Permalink

Qt Software (Trolltech/Nokia) has some pretty impressive technology and the new license makes it possible for pretty much everyone to develop Qt based software. Nokia wants a slice of the iPhone marked and Qt is the dedicated carrot on a stick. Although, I expect most people will write desktop software since this is the focus of their excellent Qt Creator IDE. Mixing Qt Creator and Visual Studio C++ 2008 Express is a powerful combination, but very complex to set up. And you will need this if you want to compile Phonon and Phonon compatible QT4.5 shared libraries. Qt Creator is very easy to use for Qt beginners, but you will need console and makefile skills if you want Phonon.

Continue reading "Java Swing versus Nokia Qt" »

Posted by JP at 08:55 PM | Permalink

This is a Remote Desktop screenshot of a brand new Quad Intel i7 / Windows 7 system running 16 FLV movies, or maybe just 14, in Teppefall Media Player (JMC/Swing). It's not usable, but it does run. Still not able to do this in WPF, though. I can only play one WPF MediaElement video stream for some reason. Maybe it's a bug in my code. Don't know.

Adobe Flash will still own the marked, but Sun could get a share of it by fixing the security problems related to Swing. It might be possible to create an FLV player in Java Swing that is faster than a Flash 10 based player. JavaFX might do the same, but only if they put JavaFX inside the JRE. Downloading a 15Mb JavaFX player is not a very useful experience after downloading a 15Mb JRE. My biggest concern is not Windows, but rather OS X people in an infinite bitching loop.

I guess this demo proves that my layout technology is pretty scalable. Though, JMC is still not ready for professional use. There are audio and video synchronization problems everywhere.

Posted by JP at 11:25 PM | Permalink

For ten years people bitched and moaned about how messed up Swing layout was. FlowLayout , BoxLayout, BorderLayout and CardLayout was fine, but all those other bastard layout managers, that user interface tools used, were pure evil. Sometimes they weren't even in the JRE. And now Sun has solved this problem by ignoring it. JavaFX has ignored layout in such a way that Amy Fowler has had to write an in-depth article about how to achieve dynamic layout in a JavaFX scene. Because this AJAX killer doesn't really support forms, tables, component aware copy/paste and other totally unnecessary features of modern user interface development. JavaFX is turning into Ruby On Rails alpha meets WPF beta. Unstable programming API's meets under performing graphics code.

Continue reading "JavaFX is not solving any real problems" »

Posted by JP at 07:25 PM | Permalink

Here are two similar screenshots. Sun uses a pretty brutal video scaling algorithm and this is a better screenshot than the one below this post.

Sun seems to be in a coma, so I'm only working on the WPF version.

Posted by JP at 10:32 PM | Permalink

"Larry Ellison officially committed to Java FX"

Larry Ellison also committed to Java *cough*, Java *burp* and Java *sniffle*. When you bitch slap a brand like Sun Microsystems did, you end up with vague desperate nonsense like this.

I just can't stop laughing.

Posted by JP at 02:06 AM | Permalink

I've been trying to support a few older platforms and Java versions, but this latest security update from Sun forces me to focus on Plugin2. I still don't have a clue how to support 1.5/Mozilla/Tiger or 1.6+JNLP/Opera/Vista. Opera rolled their own Java applet launcher and this makes Web Start JNLP extensions a royal pain in the ass. On the positive side.. what can't run is neither deadlocking !

The Teppefall SDK will be released later this year, but you can test the new JJHPlugin code here. Note that the 1.6r15 update is only two days old, so some people might not be experience the problem yet. Sun simply blacklisted the old JNLPAppletLauncher because of a serious security problem.

About Teppefall Hybrid
Teppefall Hybrid is a single user interface component API for Java based desktop and browser development. Hybrid uses the Teppefall Layout JFC format for layout and Adobe AIR application.xml for application launch scripts.

Posted by JP at 07:38 PM | Permalink

Do you know what a guy like me does when Sun Microsystems refuses to release JMediaPane, a Swing API that was announced almost three years ago ? Do I create a lot of JavaFX code and then go into a corner and cry ? No... I create the same media player in Microsoft WPF and C#. That's what people like me do. Yeah, Chuck Norris approves this message !

Continue reading "Java Swing versus WPF running on Windows Vista Chuck Norris Edition." »

Posted by JP at 08:33 PM | Permalink

This is really a stupid test, but I'm showcasing this just to give Adobe a little hint. This my JMC based video player playing four FLV encoded videos versus playing one FLV video in the Adobe Media Player. A lot of memory is being used by the AMP streaming logic, syndication system, image cache, theme system, animation engine and such but the memory usage is still pretty spectacular. But that's not the most shocking issue. The CPU usage is for some absurd reason in the same ballpark. Give or take a few ballparks in scientific accuracy.

Continue reading "Java Swing versus Adobe Flash/Flex" »

Posted by JP at 08:24 PM | Permalink

From 1.6.0_14
"Although G1 is available for use in this release, note that production use of G1 is only permitted where a Java support contract has been purchased.".

Probably a coincidence though. JMC, Scenegraph, JavaFX, G1.. Open source revolution my ass. The “Java Store” is probably the “EULA Store” with Web Start as DRM. Or maybe I'm wrong and the JMC/Scenegraph/JavaFX runtime is "silently" installed the day before JavaOne. Fingers crossed.

Posted by JP at 05:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)