The Java Extension Mechanism

Article by Thomas Kunneth, 4 pages, 15 minutes.
This article was about something completely different than I thought it would be. What it is about is a way to drop jars in a directory of the JRE and have them be used by for all apps on that JRE. Given that I've been forced to use the lib/endorsed directory for quite some time now, this wasn't really news to me.
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Prototype: Easing AJAX's Pain

Article by Bruce Perry, 7 pages, 20 minutes.
A small, simple introduction to some of the functionality in the prototype library. It's not the most readable I've even seen and it only touches the surface of what's in prototype, but it was a quick read so worth the time.
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Introduction to nonblocking algorithms

Article by Brian Goetz, 6 pages, 40 minutes.
A very interesting article about so-called nonblocking algorithms that are possible in Java 5. If you know about the difference between pessimistic and optimistic locking, then using the synchronized keyword is similar to pessimistic locking while nonblocking is similar to optimistic locking. I found the article a very good read and spent a long trying trying to understand the examples. Nonblocking can be immensely complex, but it will in most cases result in a more efficient implementation.
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Using Java platform management beans

Article on DeveloperWorks, 16 pages, 45 mins.
This article discusses what's behind the great JConsole application that was introduced in Java 5.0. They're called MXBeans and they're an extension to the JMX technology that has been available for some time. The article gives a nice introduction to MXBeans and shows how to create both local and remote clients for them.
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LDAP Programming in Java Made Simple

Article by Ulrik Sandberg and Mattias Arthursson , 9 pages, 30 minutes.
This article introduces the LdapTemplate framework, which attempts to make LDAP programming easier in a way similar to how the Spring JdbcTemplate makes JDBC programming easier. From what I understand from the article it is indeed less work to get LDAP working with the framework and most of the templating code is gone. It is still quite verbose however, so from my view further improvements could be made to the framework.
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From DHTML to DOM scripting - an example of how to replace outdated JavaScript techniques

Document by Christian Heilmann, 40 pages, 90 minutes.
This is quite a long read, but gives a good introduction to what it takes to move from old-style DHTML scripting to the now more favored non-obtrusive DOM scripting. It's an interesting read and for once this article seems to match the pace I like. My only complaint is that my mind started to wander in the latter pages. This is most likely caused by the fact that the example used for the demonstration is a bit too big.
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Mastering Ajax, Part 5: Manipulate the DOM

Article by Brett McLaughlin, 14 pages, 20 minutes.
This the second to last article in the series and the author is still only explaining very basic DOM manipulation. The reason this takes so many articles and pages is in the fact that the text is sprinkled with code samples, repeats of fragments of those code samples and screenshots. Although this results in a very readable article, I can't help bub feel that the author is trying to fill more pages than strictly needed.