cletus gave an astonishing answer, but I have to strongly disagree with
Java on the desktop is basically dead
In fact, it is more than alive :] Eclipse IDE is far more than just a developer tool. Check out SWT/JFace/Eclipse RCP framework at eclipse.org - with it, you can build applications like Eclipse yourself. Text editors, graphical diagram editors, modelling tools, reports.. I can't keep up with Eclipse technologies myself... some of them have made it into Spring and are even planned in next Java version to be supported natively (modules like OSGi). Forget Swing, desktop apps these days are being developed in RCP way.
Some info can be found at http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Rich_Client_Platform and eclipse zone at dzone.com.
Java now has support for JavaScript by default and aditionally a number of languages like python, ruby etc. have been "ported" to its ecosystem as Jython, JRuby. There is also a new language called groovy and its flagship project grails (which uses Spring and Hibernate).
GWT (Java to JavaScript converter + set of widgets) is gaining attention. There is even an emergent project called Eclipse RAP that aims to bring RCP stuff into the web.
Apart from JBoss and Glassfish, you may be interested in Jetty - an extremely lightweight yet powerful alternative.
