As a relative newbie in the Java world, I am finding many things frustratingly obtuse to accomplish that are relatively trivial in many other frameworks. A primary example is a simple solution for asynchronous http requests. Seeing as one doesn't seem to already exist, what is the best approach? Creating my own threads using a blocking type lib like httpclient or the built-in java http stuff, or should I use the newer non-blocking io java stuff - it seems particularly complex for something which should be simple. What I am looking for is something easy to use from a developer point of view - something similar to URLLoader in AS3 - where you simply create a URLRequest - attach a bunch of event handlers to handle the completion, errors, progress, etc, and call a method to fire it off. If you are not familiar with URLLoader in AS3, its so super easy and looks something like this: private void getURL(String url) { URLLoader loader = new URLLoader(); loader.addEventListener(Event.Complete, completeHandler); loader.addEventListener(HTTPStatusEvent.HTTP_STATUS, httpStatusHandler); loader.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, ioErrorHandler); URLRequest request = new URLRequest(url); // fire it off - this is asynchronous so we handle // completion with event handlers loader.load(request); } private void completeHandler(Event event) { URLLoader loader = (URLLoader)event.target; Object results = loader.data; // process results } private void httpStatusHandler(Event event) { // check status code } private void ioErrorHandler(Event event) { // handle errors }