Spring: A Developer's Notebook -- This no-nonsense book quickly gets you up to speed on the new Spring open source framework. Favoring examples and practical application over theory, Spring: A Developer's Notebook features ten code-intensive labs that will force you to hone your skills by working through multiple instructional examples. In the end, you'll understand how to produce simple, clean, and effective applications. Sample Chapter 6, Services and AOP (PDF) is available free online.

Form Your Own Design Pattern Study Group -- Like most complex subjects, design patterns are best learned over a period of time, not in a few sittings. Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Freeman suggest one way to ease the learning curve (and have some fun along the way): form a study group using their book, Head First Design Patterns. Get your engineering team together and get started with this comprehensive article.

O'Reilly Launches CodeZoo Site -- CodeZoo exists to help you find high-quality, freely available, reusable components, getting you past the repetitive parts of coding, and onto the rest of your projects. The CodeZoo community, through component ratings, tips, download tracking, and more, makes it easy to sort out the good code from the rest. Check out the site and then read Marc Hedlund's blog for the inside scoop.

New Titles on Safari -- Search, annotate, read, and download chapters from your favorite technical books through Safari Bookshelf. New titles from O'Reilly include: Linux Desktop Hacks, IPv6 Network Administration, Apache Security, Jakarta Struts Cookbook, Firefox Hacks, Hackers & Painters, and Linux in a Windows World. If you haven't gone on Safari yet, get a free trial.

Save on Jolted O'Reilly Titles -- For a limited time, O’Reilly is offering a special 30% discount off our Software Development Jolt Award winners and finalists. And, to sweeten the deal, we’ll even throw in free shipping. The O’Reilly Jolt Award winners are Head First Design Patterns (Product Excellence Award), Better, Faster, Lighter Java (Product Excellence Award), and Hibernate: A Developer's Notebook (Productivity Award). Offer ends April 30th. Share the buzz!

O'Reilly Wins Five Jolt Awards (PDF) -- We are proud to announce that in the General Books category, the top prize was awarded to Head First Design Patterns. In Technical Books, the top prize went to Better, Faster, Lighter Java, and Hibernate: A Developer's Notebook took home a productivity award. And finally, in Websites and Developer Networks, the O'Reilly Network received the Product Excellence Award, and java.net (produced in collaboration with Sun and CollabNet) won a productivity award. The winners will all be featured in the June 2005 issue of Software Development magazine.

A Look at Commons Chain, Part 2 -- In part one of this two-part series, Bill Siggelkow showed Java programmers how certain design patterns help Commons Chain to define and execute sequential sets of steps. In part two, Bill shows how Struts uses Chain to add custom behavior to request processing. Bill is the author of Jakarta Struts Cookbook.

A Look at Commons Chain: The New Java Framework, Part 1 -- In part one of a two-part series, Bill Siggelkow covers the basics of Chain, a promising new framework from the Jakarta Commons subproject that lets you integrate Chain into the Struts build process. In part two, Bill will cover how Chain is being applied to Struts and other projects. Bill is the author of Jakarta Struts Cookbook.

Streaming QuickTime with Java -- Years ago, realtime multicast streaming came to QuickTime in version 5, but people still don't realize that it can be called from QuickTime for Java. Learn how it works from this ONJava.com article by Chris Adamson, author of QuickTime for Java: A Developer's Notebook.

Internationalization, Part 1 -- Writing software that is truly multilingual is not an easy task. In this excerpt, David Flanagan offers programming examples for the three steps to internationalization in Java: using Unicode character encoding, handling local customs, and localizing user-visible messages. David is the author of Java Examples in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition.

Embedding Multimedia in JSPs -- A JSP is the preferred choice for combining multimedia with dynamic content, because you can make the tags that you use to embed the multimedia a part of the JSP's HTML template text. Chapter 17 of Java Servlet & JSP Cookbook teaches you how to use object and embed tags to embed multimedia in Java web components. If you like this chapter, read the whole book (and up to nine others) on Safari with a free trial subscription.

QuickTime for Java Components --For years, QuickTime has been able to add new features while maintaining tremendous backwards compatibility, and critical to making this work is QuickTime's system of components. Author Chris Adamson introduces QuickTime components and how they enable runtime discovery of available features, including importers and exporters for graphics and movie formats, in this excerpt from O'Reilly's recently released QuickTime for Java: A Developer's Notebook.

A Computer Book Author's Manifesto -- In a recent post to the StudioB mailing list, Kathy Sierra shared her thoughts about the state of the computer book industry, along with some ideas about what can be done to improve the situation. Kathy is a co-creator of O'Reilly's Head First Series.

Remote Method Invocation is a powerful technology for developing networked applications without having to worry about the low-level networking details. This chapter from Java Examples in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition presents examples of the RMI capabilities of the java.rmi and java.rmi.server packages. If you like this chapter, read the whole book (and up to nine others) on Safari with a free trial subscription.

java.net Online Books -- Safari Bookshelf has expanded its services to members of the java.net community. Among Safari's many features are plugins for the Eclipse and NetBeans development environments, so users can search, annotate, read, and download the industry's leading technical books without ever leaving their working environment. Read about the new safari.java.net portal in this blog by Daniel Steinberg, editor of java.net.