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In a previous post I contrasted Java’s message dialog with the message box window that is available to .Net programmers. I also showed how each can be created with just one line of code. In this post my discussion will go a little further and we’ll see how much more useful the JOptionPane class can be to Java programmers.

The JOptionPane class is the class that provides the methods for creating a message dialog. Specifically, a message dialog window is an instance of the JOptionPane class. However, an instance of the JOptionPane class is not necessarily a message dialog window because the JOptionPane class can create several types of dialog windows through various public methods it exposes to the programmer. Those dialog windows can be the message dialog, an option dialog, a confirmation dialog, and an input dialog. In addition to those basic dialog windows, if you have special requirements you can also subclass the JOptionPane class to create your own custom dialog windows.

The Confirmation Dialog

The Input Dialog

continue reading…

I dislike AT&T Wireless.

If you asked me two weeks ago, I would have said I hate AT&T Wireless with a passion!

But I’ve calmed down since then. Now I just dislike them.

I dislike them enough that I will be leaving the ranks of their active customer base as soon as my current contract expires; and I told them as much. I didn’t always feel this way. I’ve been a customer of AT&T Wireless for quite some time now, years, in fact. I started out as a customer of Cingular Wireless and then they were bought up by AT&T Wireless. That’s how I entered into this relationship.

For years I was happy with my service. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t terrible either. Then, two weeks ago, I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but I made the dumb mistake of calling their customer service line to ask a question. Oh my God!! What was I thinking!? What a bonehead move that was because it caused me to have several days of torturous pain. As if that was not enough, my monthly bill was raised by an extra $15 a month without me asking for or obtaining any extra services. And they told me I couldn’t do anything about it!

Isn’t there another organization that operates in that same manner and don’t they call that one The Mob? Thankfully, with AT&T I do have the option of taking my business elsewhere . . . Or do I? I wonder if AT&T will send a couple of thugs to my home to break my legs when I tell them I no longer require their services. I know, it seems really far-fetched but I can tell you that, although I am dramatizing this a bit, to me it seems just a little less far-fetched than it did a few weeks ago. No, wait . . . That whole part about sending someone to my home to cause me bodily harm is really just my imagination running amok. So let’s get back to reality and I’ll tell you exactly what happened that caused me to have this extreme dislike for AT&T. continue reading…

I continue to receive visitors to my web site looking for an old article I wrote in 2004. That article described how to use bit masking to store multiple values in one variable and the example was written in VB.Net. Here is a link to the article for anyone that might find it useful.

how-to-store-multiple-values-together-in-one-variable-by-using-a-bit-mask-in-vb-net

Those programmers familiar with Microsoft programming languages and the related programming environments are no strangers to the utilitarian message box available with as little as one line of code. In VB.Net, that line may look like this:

'
' Displaying a message box.
MessageBox.Show("Hello", "my caption", MessageBoxButtons.OK)

And when that line executes, you would see something similar to this:

As you can see, that window is the result of calling the Show function on the MessageBox class and that class lives in the Windows.System.forms.dll assembly. As long as your project keeps a reference to that assembly and you import the System.Windows.Forms name space into your project, you’ll have easy access to the message box as well as hundreds of other useful prebuilt classes. In most modern integrated development environments, when you create a new windows project, that reference to the assembly and the import of the name space is performed for you automatically. So, literally, you can show the message box with just the effort it takes to write that one line of code.

But this post is about message boxes in Java, so enough with VB.Net. Does the Java framework provide a similar utility for creating message boxes? Yes it does. You just have to know where to look. continue reading…

Recently, I began two software projects that I am undertaking in my spare time for my own purposes. One is a small application in the prototyping stage. The other is a huge enterprise level application currently in the planning and designing stage.

Since I am doing this in my spare time, I have the luxury of working within a time frame that suits my needs (meaning I don’t have to rush to meet milestones other than those I may set for myself). This also makes it convenient for me to allocate some time for posting to my blog.

Because these two projects are my own personal projects, I also get to have a little fun in making certain decisions such as which programming language to use. I decided on using Java for both projects because in my career I have so far only skirted the use of Java and never really worked with it on a project from start to finish. This will give me the opportunity to get some in-depth experience with this programming language hopefully getting as good with it as I have been with VB.Net and C-Sharp.

As I explore the guts and the glory of the Java programming language, I will post my musings here on my blog.