Another year has come and go writing this blog. An interesting shift in the content can be noticed as I wrote more and more about Groovy than Java (wait, isn't Groovy Java too? ), I hope I haven't bored my readership (albeit small) to tears with my Groovy ramblings. Following the spirit of last year's anniversary post, here are the 12 most viewed entries on this blog (ah, the memories)

1. 18/Jul/07 Testing Groovy UIs with FEST
   This post shows how easy is to integrate Groovy and FEST for UI testing, the good news is that you don't have to do something special to get them running, other than add the jars to your classpath. this trick was also shown at BOF-5101 during JavaOne 08
2. 25/Dec/07 GraphicsBuilder: drawing custom shapes
   Hmm the date suggets this was a Xmas gift for Java2D aficionados, a quick howto on embedding custom shapes to GraphicsBuilder, the example uses Chet's donuts (from Filthy Rich Clients).
3. 22/Feb/08 What is going on in Java land these days?
   I wrote this piece while under the influence of heavy Groovy drugs during 2GX, I still think people would gain more if they embrace other languages rather than have Java as their only hammer, I guess not all of us are free to choose our own tools.
4. 03/Dec/07 CSS + Swing + Groovy? you bet!
   How to extend SwingBuilder's functionality without subclassing SwingBuilder, one of the neat features FactoryBuilderSupport has brought into the table when it comes to making builders.
5. 01/Jun/07 Groovier JSON
   introducing the new Groovy enabled features of Json-lib 2.x (and yet another builder).
6. 22/Jul/07 Embedding GoogleMaps into JMatter
   This is one of my favorites, not only it proves it is quite easy to embed any Swing component as custom view on JMatter, it does it with Groovy! I'm glad that this entry inspired Eitan to add a better version to JMatter itself (Mappable domains baby!).
7. 20/Jul/07 Json-lib 2.0 released
   I believe Json-lib is one of the reasons why I started this blog, it is fitting that an important release as 2.0 is in the top ten .
8. 03/Dec/07 First look at GraphicsPad
   Once GraphicsBuilder was up and running I needed a faster way to test features other than hacky testcases run within Eclipse, you surely spot the similarities with JavaFXPad
9. 29/Dec/07 GraphicsBuilder 0.4.3 is out
   I don't know what happened last winter but I was on a roll. Graphicsbuilder 0.4.3 is a reflection of how much time I had in my hands as I completely reworked the builder to be more extensible.
10. 06/Jun/07 Fusing with Groovy
    This represents my first attempt for an Aerith-like app using Fuse and Groovy, I ran into some classpath problems, the rest of the story can be red at
    • Fusing with Groovy II
    • Fusing with Groovy III
11. 11/Aug/07 Creating Java2D graphics the Groovy way
    The post that announced GraphicsBuilder to the world.
12. 18/Nov/07 The joys of commons-apache
    Don't reinvent the wheel when it comes to backward JDK compatibility. If you are allowed to add external dependencies to your project go check out Apache commons!

And the three runner ups of this year are:

1. 20/Jan/08 JsonView for Spring
   The other reason I started this blog, I got tired of waiting and released it on my own.
2. 29/Jul/07 Comparing builders: wingS vs Swing
   WingS is a server-side Swing-like framework, it seemed fitting to provide a SwingBuilder-like builder for it, don't you think?
3. 26/Mar/08 3D desktop disappointment
   I was sooo happy with my Mandriva installation when this jdk bug hit me, now I must watch out for this little buggers (the jdk has some per window manager hacks, amazing).

Looks like I was quite active during summer and winter...