Annotations are a very useful feature of the Java language but sometimes an overdose of a good thing can be bad for you. Let me explain:

In our first example from Spring MVC we are using an annotation to map a method to a url. Without annotations this mapping information would likely have to go into an external file, perhaps an xml file, so annotations are very helpful in this case, because the code is much more straightforward when we have the two together. This is a good use of annotations:

I recently bought my first netbook a Samsung N315, mainly so that I can have a computer with me when I am on holidays for web browsing, staying in touch with my projects and maybe doing some coding when I am feeling bored in the evenings.

The Samsung N315 has a nice look with rounded edges and a rubberized exterior. Specs are standard for current 10.1" netbooks: 1Gb ram, 1.66GHz n450 Atom cpu, 250Gb disk, wifi, bluetooth, 1024x600 display resolution, 3 USB ports, VGA out port, card reader, ethernet port and 1.3Mp webcam. It has a 'pebble' style keyboard which is comfortable enough to type on.

You are using markdown with the wmd-editor in your application, perhaps after having discovered it thanks to stackoverflow.com. What do you post to the server, the markdown "source" or the rendered html?

You could post the html which saves you the trouble of generating the html again on the server side. But if you want to allow your users to edit the text in the future now you don't have the markdown source anymore. So then maybe it is better to post the markdown, which means you have to render it to html on your server using another server-side markdown library. However it can be that the markdown implementation for your language is not bug-free enough, or maybe just not 100% consistent with the official implementation. Or maybe you just feel that this step is redundant since you already have the html sitting ready and packed on the browser side.

These days I am working on some web applications, which I build with good old ant. Build time is less that 10 seconds which is pretty good. Yet even this is too slow when developing, if I had to wait 10 seconds (or 5 minutes if I were using maven) every time I made a change before I could test it, I would go nuts.

Instead I would like to make changes in eclipse and be able to instantly test the results in my browser, before my mind wanders off and I start playing tetris or barrage. To achieve this I am using an embedded jetty server.

If you are in the business of writing Web 2.0-ish applications then clean urls are an essential part of the package.

Bad => /member.jsp?username=tastychicken&view=blog&sort=hot
Good => /member/tastychicken/blog/hot

Here is small tutorial for drawing a goblin avatar. You will need a vector drawing program (I use inkscape a very nice and free program) and know the basics of how to use it.

First of all we start with the eyes.