Update Your Client Now

Droplets on the March:

Droplets in this month's Java Developer Journal

Droplets Developers Party, June 12, New York City

Meet our latest partner: Lucid Technologies Group

Instant Desktop Alerts. You can now use our Java and C++ APIs to write instant desktop alerts into your Droplets applications. These alerts continue to update your users even when their applications are closed! There are a variety of ways to alert your users, including system tray icons, icons with text, flashing desktop icons, "bring-to-front", sound alerts and more.

Easier Real-Time UI Updates. You can now update your Droplets UI fields asynchronously, with zero client-side action. Check out Droplets Email, Discussion or Picture Share to see how Droplets can make your end-users say goodbye forever to their Refresh buttons.

Droplets Chat and IM. Our partner Grassroots Technologies has written and deployed the Direct Messenger, a Droplets Platform-based Chat Room and instant messaging application that you can access from any connected computer in the world with zero application download.
Try it now!

Third Party Droplets Hosting. My Droplets has officially begun hosting Droplets written by third-party developers. Contact us today if you have created a Droplet and would like to host it from our site as a free service.

Droplets in this month's Java Developers Journal. Droplets 2.0 is featured in this month's issue (June 2001) of the Java Developers Journal, including a free Product Showcase CD that contains the Droplets SDK for Java and C++, along with a video introduction to distributed GUI toolkit programming.

Droplets Developers Party, June 12, Droplets Headquarters.
If you're in the New York area on 12 June, don't miss our blowout Droplets Developer Bash at our HQ in NYC's Silicon Alley. 59 W. 19th Street, second floor. 6:30pm. Free food, drink and networking for all NYC area developers. If possible, kindly RSVP.

Droplets' talented arsenal of partners are trained and ready to help you deploy either ready-made Droplets, or unique, custom Droplets for your specific company's needs and requirements. For further information please visit our Partnership Page.

Real-Time updates can be enabled with the Droplets API in one of two ways: Polling the Server or Posting to the Client. This month we'll discuss the first alternative.

Setting up a poll to the Server involves a single call to setPollTime() within your Application object:

    Application.setPollTime(int centiseconds);     

The integer argument represents the number of centiseconds (1/100ths of a second) between client polls. So an argument of 100 would cause the client to poll the server every second; 6000 would cause the client to poll every minute.

Once you've set the client to poll, you need to wire a poll listener and account for application behavior in the event of an update. This is accomplished by:

• Creating an implementation of the PollListener interface.

• Within the PollListener, defining the behavior of the handleClientPoll() method. This method then defines application behavior in the event of a client poll.

• Adding this PollListener to the application by calling the Application object's addPollListener() method;

If you want to stop the client polling at any point in your application logic, all you need do is again call setPollTime with an argument of -1:

app.setPollTime(-1);

You can also remove the application's PollListener at any time by calling Application.removePollListener() with your existing PollListener as an argument.

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About Droplets
Droplets� is a software platform for server-based online applications featuring real-time capabilities, high security, massive scalability and thin bandwidth usage. Droplets provide a more functional, user-friendly interface to online applications, and can be shared and distributed via email, in a Web page, or dragged out of the browser to the desktop, and accessed like local software - with zero application code on the client.