Each night our build machine kicks off a series of automated web tests using a tool called Selenium. Selenium is packaged with - among other things - a server that allows developers to remotely control a browser using many popular programming languages. Like other servers, Selenium listens on a specific port waiting for a client to establish a connection. Once the client (in our case JUnit test code) establishes a connection the tests are run. After the tests are complete the client code tells the Selenium server to shut itself down.

I've been doing quite a bit of Ruby programming lately and I'm always surprised by how much I can get done with such a small amount of code. Ruby is not my primary development language, but for many of the things I need to do, Ruby is the perfect tool for the job.

I recently finished reading Venkat Subramaniam's latest book, Programming Groovy: Dynamic Productivity for the Java Developer. Over the past couple of years I've read quite a few books covering the Groovy language, but Venkat's book has by far been the best.

I've had the chance to hear Venkat speak a few times and his presentation skills are top-notch. Not surprisingly, I discovered that many of those strong communication skills transferred into his writing as well. The book is written in a clear and concise manner. Each chapter is relatively short and focused making the book easy to digest.

For technology enthusiasts living in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area there is never a shortage of interesting technical and networking events to attend. Most IT professionals in the area are aware of the larger organizations (NOVAJUG) and events (NFJS), but if you’re looking for something a little more specific, one great resource to use is the D.C. Tech Events Calendar.

Looking for a quick and easy way to add a little eye candy to your website? Look no further than Google Maps. Developers comfortable working with basic JavaScript will have no trouble using Google Maps to visualize their geospatial data.

One of the things that continues to amaze me about the Groovy language is how easy it is to accomplish seemingly complex tasks in a very short amount of time. Recently, I've been working on a Grails web application that stores a lot of geospatial information that I am interested in plotting on a map.

In order to accomplish this task I decided to use Google's Map API because 1) it's free and 2) Google Maps are awesome.

Just over a month ago the Groovy team released the latest version of Groovy, a dynamic programming language built specifically for the JVM (Java Virtual Machine). This version offers a variety of functionality and performance improvements over previous Groovy releases.

Note: The latest version of Groovy is actually 1.5.1 - a bug fix release. All code examples in this post were run using version 1.5.1. Click here to download the source code examples and follow along.

It almost makes me shudder to think about how many people are going to be gunning for that little X in the top right corner of their browser window once they realize this post is about yet another web framework. BUT WAIT! This one is different, I swear. That’s what they all say right? But it’s the truth. Wicket is different, and if you spend a little time with me, I’ll show you how.

What Makes Wicket So Different?