When I first announced that Sun was making its Java Studio Creator product available as a free download, some skeptics labelled this as a mere publicity stunt ahead of the release of Creator 2.
Well, Java Studio Creator 2 is now here, and it’s still free.
Java Studio Creator is based on JavaServer Faces (JSF) technology, a component-based approach to web development that is similar in style to ASP.NET. This positions Java Studio Creator as a direct competitor to Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions. Both bring drag-and-drop rapid application development to the web and both are free downloads, but Creator is free of many of the restrictions placed on Microsoft’s Express Editions (e.g. it offers a full visual database query builder).
And of course, being written in Java, Creator will run on Mac OS X and Linux systems.
A brief overview of some of the new features:
- improved code completion in code editors (Java, HTML, CSS)
- a new graphical CSS editor
- EJB Support (was beta in Creator 1)
- many new JSF components
- a new database support layer
- HTTP monitoring
- AJAX components (including a Google Maps component)
- runs on Java 5 with associated speed and UI benefits
If you’ve considered Java web development in the past and were put off by code-heaviness and cryptic XML configuration files, you should definitely check out the video product tours for Creator 2 to see just how easy it can be.
Kevin YankKevin Yank is an accomplished web developer, speaker, trainer and author of Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL and Co-Author of Simply JavaScript and Everything You Know About CSS is Wrong! Kevin loves to share his wealth of knowledge and it didn't stop at books, he's also the course instructor to 3 online courses in web development. Currently Kevin is the Director of Front End Engineering at Culture Amp.
