Getting the new Java 6 update 10 plugin to work with Firefox in Ubuntu

Ubuntu Intrepid, released today, includes the newest version of java, Java 6 update 10 build 33, which features a new java browser plugin with support for features like draggable applets and jnlp-based applets. See these demo applets, for example.

For some reason, however, Ubuntu still has the old version of the java plugin enabled for browsers. So those demo applets won't work. And how to get it to work is not documented correctly anywhere. To make it work, run these commands in Terminal:

sudo update-alternatives --install /etc/alternatives/xulrunner-1.9-javaplugin.so xulrunner-1.9-javaplugin.so /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so 50

sudo update-alternatives --config xulrunner-1.9-javaplugin.so

and select the libnpjp2.so option (2)

New Software and Hardware Releases

Just a round-up of some major software releases happening:

• Java 6 update 10 - a new version of java that is more lightweight and quicker to load applets.
• The 6.5 version of the Java development environment Netbeans is due out next month, or you can grab the release candidate now.
• Ubuntu Intrepid - the next version of Ubuntu will be released this week.
• OpenOffice 3.0, a free open source alternative to Microsoft Office, was released. You can now open and edit pdf files using openoffice extensions.
• A new version of the Arduino circuit board (Duemilanove) was also released.

Impulse Conferencing

The website for the DrupalCon 2009 conference for Drupal developers is now online. You can register online for free and vote for or propose sessions. I have to schedule a trip next spring to visit NSF in DC anyway, so partly on a whim I proposed a session entitled "Drupal in Academia and Education." I don't know that it will be accepted, and if Bill Fitzgerald (author of an upcoming book on drupal and education) or someone else proposes a talk on using Drupal with K-12 schools, I can narrow the focus of my talk to using Drupal in higher education and for academic department websites (like our own). I'll talk about using Drupal as a blended learning support tool, using Drupal to help market an academic department, and Drupal vs. (or in combination with) Moodle. I'm now in the process of taking the design used for our department site and creating a more generic version in Drupal 6, to be called "Department 2.0" when it is ready to be released. It will be of course free and open source (GPL), just like Drupal and all its modules. Here's my presentation description:

Abstract

How can Drupal bring academic departments and schools into the 21st century, enhance teaching and learning, and connect students, teachers and faculty with one another? What modules and patches are especially useful for academic/educational Drupal sites? What usability and design features can enhance Drupal for these audiences?

Agenda

• Description of the "Department 2.0" Drupal distribution for academic departments (in progress), and descriptions of other academic/educational Drupal distros (DrupalEd, Social Media Classroom, Prosepoint...).
• A summary of some of the dozens of modules used in Department 2.0 and other distros that can be useful for academic/educational sites.
• Using Drupal to help faculty and students, including distance ed students, feel more connected to their department and to each other.
• Case study: Using a Drupal-based website to help market an academic department and recruit new students: http://itls.usu.edu/
• 3 case studies: Using Drupal as a blended learning support tool.
• Drupal vs. Moodle, Drupal + Moodle. I've used both separately with classes, and in January I'll be combining them in one class. I'll discuss how they can complement one another.
• Usability and feature suggestions to enhance Drupal for academic and educational audiences.

More Drupal design and site development related topics (I'll link to online handouts if there isn't time to speak about them):

• Using views/cck/date/calendar to create: listings of people by role, job boards, group calendars, a resource/room reservation system, ...
• Different options and module patches for supporting blogrolls and shared links in Drupal.
• Module patches to get wikitools, freelinking, and organic groups to work together to support separate group wiki spaces.
• Module patch to get Drupal and Mac OS X's LDAP working together
• Site development tips: to panel or not to panel?, calendar or event?, comparing custom user profile options, Drupal 5 vs. Drupal 6.

Goals

Those who design sites for academia and schools and districts will come away with some tips and information about modules, design techniques, and other resources they may find useful. Drupal developers will come away with an understanding of some of the special needs schools and colleges have when using Drupal.

The Rise and Fall of Visual Basic

I've extolled before those application development tools that hit that sweet spot of being both beginner-friendly and powerful enough to develop real applications, including Hypercard/Supercard (now out of date) and Visual Basic:

• Reminiscing about HyperCard
• Programming: The New Literacy
• Why Johnny Can't Code
• The Spectrum of Computational Development Tools

But I've now run across a nice article explaining the history and current state of Visual Basic (and Visual Basic .NET), entitled "The Rise and Fall of Visual Basic." Little did I know VB was first announced right down the road from me in 1991 in Atlanta. Visual Basic doesn't have the best reputation among self-proclaimed serious coders (see below), but the article's a nice read. VB.NET usage is now diminishing in part because it is not different enough from C#, and the designers lost sight of VB as a layman's 'application construction kit' that it originally was, although it is still easier for beginners to develop .NET apps in VB.NET than C#.

VB.NET is still going strong though, just not as strong as Java or C#:

Java now leads with 45% market share(developers using Java some of the time), followed by C/C++ at 40%, C# at 32%, and Visual Basic at 21%.

From my perspective though (for those interested in developing educational software), the main insurmountable obstacle of Visual Basic .NET is that it can't do applets (that work in any browser on any platform), like you can with with Java platform or Flash. There are other obstacles, too, like the fact that VB.NET is closed and proprietary and .NET works on Windows only, but there is a free, open source, cross-platform VB.NET compiler available from the Mono project. And yes there is Silverlight for developing browser-based .NET applications, and Mono's open source clone Moonlight, but that's more limiting that what you can do with Java applets or Flash animations/games.

Java and Ed Tech Courses

Now that our fall semester is halfway through, I've fleshed out the main schedules and resources for the two classes I mentioned earlier. Here are the resources below, in case you are by chance interested in learning a bit about java programming or about the field of educational technology. For both courses I am using drupal and organic groups as a blended learning support tool, although in very different ways for each course.

• Multimedia Development with Java - This is really a survey course, an introduction to the java platform for non-programmers. Getting a cursory introduction to the basics of java, object-oriented programming, Swing, Java2D, and newer java platform technologies like JavaFX and GWT.
  • Course Homepage
  • Course Syllabus with links to tutorials and resources and activities. We started with Greenfoot to learn the basics of object-oriented programming and the java language, and for the rest of the semester we are using Netbeans to learn how to make real applications.
  • Java Handbook - These wiki pages are still in progress and need a good bit of polishing, but they have some notes guiding folks through the main Java tutorials on the Sun site.
• Foundations of Educational Technology
  • Course homepage
  • Course schedule
  • Ed Tech Knowledge Base - This is the wiki-based 'book' students are working on, basically crib notes and short summaries of various ed tech topics and items, such as organizations, journals, people, learning theories, instructional design models, etc. It will be cleaned up a good bit at the end of the semester to make it more presentable, and if I teach this class again next year we'll work on refining and improving it.
  • Research Paper Guidelines - I tried to provide as much guidance as possible for students' very first research paper assignment in grad school.

Shared Items and Links

Following Jason Rhode's lead, I haven't had much time to blog the past couple of months, but I still bookmark and read quite often, so here are my starred readings from google reader, and my shared links from delicious.com. I often star journal articles I want to come back to, or posts about new technologies, or programming news and tips.

We have had a lot of students in our department blog about the open education conference last week though. Many acted as volunteers during the conference.