The Drip Wire : Developer News
Reporting on The Droplets SDK - a distributed GUI toolkit • component-based UIs • server side programming
July 24, 2001
Volume 1, Issue 3
Droplets Launches Developer Zone

This week Droplets announced the launch of its full Droplets Developer Zone, a Web site community dedicated strictly to Droplets third-party developers.

Plus: This week's new feature -- "Add to Web page"

We have a winner! Java Developer wins TiVo from Droplets


Droplets SDK Training Course. The Droplets Developer Zone includes an online training course that takes you step by step through all the essentials of writing Droplets. At the end you'll have written a complete Droplets URL Monitor application. Includes full source code.
SDK Documentation. View the latest SDK documentation online at SDK Documentation.
Project Ideas. To get you started writing Droplets, the Droplets Developer Zone provides a wide variety of Droplets application ideas.
FAQ. Go directly to the Droplets Developer Zone for the most frequently asked Droplets SDK programming questions.

Live Support. Put the knowledge base and experience of our Engineering staff to your own personal use. If you can't find an answer to your question using our FAQ, contact Droplets Engineering directly.



New Platform Feature: Add to Web page. Now its easier than ever to add Droplets to your Web pages. You can embed a Droplet within your HTML page by simply selecting "Add to Web page..." from the Droplets Menu. A dialog pops up with the JavaScript which you should place within the body of your page. Just copy and paste, or save the JavaScript on your hard drive for later inclusion. Download the latest client to enable this new feature.

We Have a Winner!: The winner of last month's "Download the Droplets SDK, Win a TiVo Personal Video Recorder" is Matt Curinga of LogicChain in New York, an enterprise which develops tools for Micro Application Development and Deployment. Congratulations, Matt!

Droplets is Selling Your Droplets

New ISP Expernex.com Licenses Droplets Solution Developed by Grassroots Technologies

Grassroots Direct Messenger, the first third-party Droplet hosted on the Droplets Developer Zone, has been licensed to ISP Expernex.com. This Droplet will be offered to corporate customers and consumers as Expernex ECHO, the complete Expernex Instant Messaging and Chat Community application.

Direct Messenger was developed with the Droplets SDK by Grassroots Technologies, a New York-based Internet solutions provider.

Expernex.com is a new Internet service providing unlimited 56k dial-up access for only $12.95 per month, up to five free email accounts, over 2000 available access numbers nationwide, and Expernex ECHO online chat.

Droplets offers turn-key, packaged software sales opportunities and flexible revenue sharing options. Solutions built on the Droplets Platform are featured and hosted in the Developer Zone for free, for thousands of potential customers to see and evaluate. If you have interest in creating an enterprise-strength Droplets solution, or have begun developing Droplets for internal company use which you would like to license for sale, contact us today to learn more about marketing and hosting your Droplet on the Developer Zone.


Developer Tip
Real-Time Updates: Posting to the Client

Last month we showed you how to enable real-time updates by having the client poll the server. This time we'll show you how to get the Droplets Server to post UI updates to all active clients.

Posting to the client is accomplished via the Application object's postEvent() method. Since the Droplets UI Server takes care of all thread synchronization issues, adding event posts to your applications is relatively simple:

  1. Write a function that performs the UI update;

  2. Create an inner class that implements Java's Runnable;

  3. Use this Runnable implementer's run() method to call the function created in step 1;

  4. Instantiate the Runnable class;

  5. Call Application.postEvent, with the Runnable instantiation as its argument.

Suggest a tip


We'll continue to make Droplets even better and tell you about it from time to time. Meanwhile, please give us your feedback and check back with us at www.droplets.com.

Best regards,
The Droplets Team