community.java.net - JavaDesktop

Welcome to JavaDesktop

Welcome to JavaDesktop, a gathering place for members of the Java™ platform's graphical user interface (GUI) community. Here you'll find news, discussions, technical articles, and open source projects that use the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE™) APIs to produce applications with rich client interfaces. (If you're looking for information on the Sun Java Desktop System, you can find it at sun.com.)

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We want to hear from you! Please feel to contact us with comments, suggestions, product announcements, pretty much anything you have on your mind related to Java on the desktop:

RepaintManager's side effect

A little-known side effect of setting a custom RepaintManager or using RepaintManager.setDoubleBufferingEnabled() method — Alexander Potochkin
(Apr 13, 2008)

Character Conversion points

You'd think this sort of problem would be resolved by now, but it's not. It's still almost impossible to quickly and easily migrate an application from the too common default Latin-1 to UTF-8 character set encoding. — John O'Conner
(Apr 13, 2008)

Joint Sun/Microsoft J1 talk on Web Services

Kevin Wittkopf (Microsoft) and I (Sun) will be giving a joint talk on Java (using Metro and GlassFish) and .NET 3.5 interoperable web services at JavaOne. The blog entry gives the details. — Harold Carr
(Apr 10, 2008)

Tim Boudreau is working on the Wizard API, an open source Java library that.

Tim Boudreau is working on the Wizard API, an open source Java library that: More... (Apr 14, 2008)

Swing links of the week: April 6, 2008

Here are some Swing links that you might have missed during this week: Jacek Furmankiewicz posted a series of three entries on builders for Swing layout managers. The first entry shows two prototypes for wrapping Mig layout manager in a Java builder, the second entry explores a more WYSIWYG approach (which looks like a simplified version [...] (Apr 07, 2008)

At the speed of JavaFX

As we all rush headlong into JavaOne prep someone (okay it was James Gosling) sent me an email about performance of JavaFX. Speed is a crucial issue for anything dealing with user interfaces, so we care deeply about performance in... — Joshua Marinacci
(Apr 06, 2008)

Substance 4.3 official release

It gives me great pleasure to announce the official release for version 4.3 of Substance look-and-feel (code-named Nairobi) (Apr 14, 2008)

Swing links of the week: April 13, 2008

Here are some Swing links that you might have missed during this week... (Apr 14, 2008)

John O'Conner: Call for participation: Internationalization and Unicode Conference #32

The Internationalization & Unicode Conference is the technical conference for software and web internationalization engineers. If you have a product that implements the Unicode standard or an idea that will help others work with this standard, share your knowledge. — John O'Conner
(Apr 03, 2008)

Charles Ditzel: Java SE 6 Update 10 (Beta Early Access) Is Now Available

Beta of Update 10 of Java SE 6 is now available. (Apr 02, 2008)

Java Posse #176 - Roundup 08 - Why is Agile Hard?

Roundup 08 - Why is Agile Hard?Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com Superfriendshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Friends Unit Testinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_testing Parleys.comhttp://parleys.com Agility r (Apr 01, 2008)

Java 3D Open Sourced!

The Java 3D team has announced the open source release of the j3d-core and vecmath subprojects on java.net under the GPLv2 license with the CLASSPATH exception. This applies to all source code in the javax.media.j3d and javax.vecmath packages. Read the LICENSE.txt and README-FIRST.txt files in the top directory of each project's source code repository for details on what the license allows you to do.

You may notice that the web page and various README files now refer to the "3D Graphics API for the Java Platform" in many places. This is the official name for the open source version of the Java 3D API. Other than the name, there are no differences (and, in fact, we will build the binary version of Java 3D 1.5.2 from the same sources).

The name change was done for the same reason that OpenJDK chose a different name than "Java" for their release: namely, Java 3D is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, and we want to make it clear that: A) we are not giving away rights to use that name, and B) the binaries built from these (possibly modified) sources are not "Java 3D" from Sun.

Subject to the terms of the GPLv2 license, you may modify the j3d-core or vecmath sources, but you may not call it "Java 3D".

(Mar 05, 2008)

Java Posse #166 - Guillaume Laforge on Groovy

Interview with Guillaume Laforge on Groovy Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com This interview is also available in video form at http://parleys.com The actual interview video is: http://parleys.com/display/PARLEYS/A+Groov (Feb 28, 2008)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Translucent and shaped windows in core Java

Build 12 of JDK 6.0u10 has support for translucent and shaped windows! — Kirill Grouchnikov
(Feb 27, 2008)

Teppefall Capture: From prototype to application

There is a lot of tricky logic in this application that is not so obvious just by looking at some screen shots. There are the delicious differences between Windows XP and Vista on how they deal with shared native libraries.... (Feb 27, 2008)

Java Posse #165 - Listener Feedback

Listener Feedback Special Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com Join us for the Java Posse Roundup 2008 in Crested Butte from March 4th to 7th http://www.mindviewinc.com/Conferences/JavaPosseRoundup/ And if you are attendin (Feb 25, 2008)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Swing links of the week: February 24, 2008

Here are some Swing links that you might have missed during this week: Daniel Spiewak walks through the steps of creating a simple form, from sketching the design on a piece of paper to implementing it in code. Personally, i felt that the recommendation to select the layout that the specific developer feels comfortable with is [...] (Feb 25, 2008)

Introducing Teppefall Capture

This application is still a work in progress, but I am tired of keeping it a secret so here is the dirt. Teppefall Capture is a simple Photo Booth clone. By simple I mean it is built on the FX/Layout... (Feb 24, 2008)

John O'Conner: Java applets not viable for this application?

I've been working with a company that creates a chat system that helps companies sell more of their products online. The backend is all Java, complete with Spring, servlets...all good Java stuff. The frontend is...well, it's Flash. — John O'Conner
(Feb 22, 2008)

Charles Ditzel: Swing Pointers Updated

Swing Pointers have been updated. The Swing Pointers are simply a collection of Swing-related events, tutorials, latest new, presentations, blog entries and articles that have transpired in the last few months. More... (Feb 20, 2008)

Kirill Grouchnikov: New painter types in Substance

About three months ago i wrote an overview of painters in Substance look-and-feel. Painters are one of the major building blocks of Substance, and over the last few releases they have been used extensively to provide consistent appearance to both core and third-party components. Unfortunately, the original painter design and responsibilities have not always stood [...] (Feb 20, 2008)

Michael Nascimento Santos: Making your components work nicer inside Matisse

Have you developed the killer component for your application, but it takes too long to load inside Matisse? Or worse - you face class loading errors since it has too many weird dependencies? Well, here is a small tip to make it work faster and without much hassle... — Michael Nascimento Santos
(Feb 20, 2008)

Java Posse #164 - Newscast for Feb 18th 2008

Newscast for Feb 18th 2008 Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com Join us for the Java Posse Roundup 2008 in Crested Butte from March 4th to 7th http://www.mindviewinc.com/Conferences/JavaPosseRoundup/ And if you are attendi (Feb 20, 2008)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Flamingo 3.0 official release

The official release for version 3.0 of Flamingo component suite, including command buttons, breadcrumb bar, ribbon and file viewer panel. — Kirill Grouchnikov
(Feb 19, 2008)

Romain Guy: What do you want to hear about?

Chet and I are going to present another installment of Filthy Rich Clients at JavaOne 2008. We have a bunch of cool ideas for techniques and demos we would like to show you but I am very interested in hearing what you want to know about. If you have any visual effect, animation or graphics [...] (Feb 19, 2008)

Joshua Marinacci: JavaFX Script Doodles, #2: a tabbed rectangle

Before I dive into my second doodle I'd like to mention the following Groodle. Allow me to explain. Andres Almiray saw my first JavaFX Doodle and decided to recreate it using the GraphicsBuilder syntax of Groovy; hence a Groodle! :)... — Joshua Marinacci
(Feb 19, 2008)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Swing links of the week: February 17, 2008

Here are some Swing links that you might have missed during this week: Thierry Lefort joins the ranks of Swing bloggers and opens his blog with a slew of posts. The first entry talks about rendering bar charts in table renderers, the second one adds zooming capabilities to tables (with a very interesting zooming on selection [...] (Feb 18, 2008)

Alex Potochkin: JTrayIcon update

TrayIcon and JPopupMenu - will they ever be friends? — Alexander Potochkin
(Feb 14, 2008)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Swing links of the week: February 10, 2008

Here are some Swing links that you might have missed during this week: Christopher Deckers writes about the new functionality in drop 0.9.3 of his DJ Native Swing project. The main focus is on the possibility to mix heavyweight and lightweight components with lightweight components on top, to change their Z-order or re-parent them. The new Metawidget [...] (Feb 11, 2008)

Geertjan: Beans Binding for Dummies

If you want to really understand "beans binding", i.e., JSR-295, you can study lots of documents. Alternatively, you can go through a small but very powerful demo, here. At the end, you have a bean, which has properties that you bind to Swing components. No coding at all, because the NetBeans tooling makes it a point-and-click experience.

At the end, and only a few clicks later, I moved the demo to the NetBeans Platform, installing it in the IDE's "output" window position. (I created a suite, which included two library wrappers, for the beans binding JAR and the original app JAR, together with my functionality module that provides the TopComponent, which creates the new window in the IDE.) Now, I can change the text in the JTextField below and then immediately the text in the ticker is changed. Why? Because the relevant property in the ticker bean is bound to the Swing component (in real life, when you run the app, the yellow banner with the blue text is moving from right to left, like a "ticker", such as is found on the bottom of the screen on CNN, for example):

Take my advice and follow the Ticker Demo and you too will find out what it's all about.

(Feb 10, 2008)

Java Posse #163 - Newscast for Feb 8th 2008

Newscast for Feb 8th 2008 Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com Join us for the Java Posse Roundup 2008 in Crested Butte from March 4th to 7th http://www.mindviewinc.com/Conferences/JavaPosseRoundup/ Grails 1.0 has been rel (Feb 10, 2008)

Igor Kushnirskiy: Scenario Webstart Extension

webstart extension is available for Scenario binaries. — Igor Kushnirskiy
(Feb 09, 2008)

Alex Potochkin: Disabling Swing Containers, the final solution?

The elegant and effective solution for disabling Swing containers, the correct implementation of the locking GlassPane included — Alexander Potochkin
(Jan 23, 2008)

Ben Galbraith: of Fonts and Java2D

A poorly-rendered typeface can really ruin my day. This entry describes my past and recent efforts to get beautiful type in my Java Swing applications. (Jan 25, 2008)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Is one of my Java desktop 2008 wishes coming true?

I had only two things on my Java desktop wishlist for 2008 - cross-platform support for H.264 / FLV formats and converters / viewers for competing markup formats. To quote myself on the second wish You know what i’m talking about - those pesky competitors that have 99.9% percent of the consumer-facing rich desktop market. Flash [...] (Jan 24, 2008)

Java Posse #158 - Newscast for Jan 9th 2008

Java Posse Episode 158 - January 9th 2008 Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com T-shirt is available -- http://www.zazzle.com/javaposse Roundup - only days left for the early bird price - sign up before January 15th or it (Jan 10, 2008)

How do I answer the question: What is Java?

Things are going well on the designer tool, but we won't have anything to show publicly for a while. I will tease you with the news that I just implemented the first version of a drawing tool assistant that you... — Joshua Marinacci
(Jan 09, 2008)

Native text rendering in Swing applications - followup with Steve Northover

Following the last few entries on using SWT for native text rendering in Swing applications under the Substance look-and-feel, i was contacted by Steve Northover (technical lead of the SWT project) with a few suggestions. First, to recap the relevant entries up until now: The introduction showed a few screenshots of rasterizing the default Vista [...] (Jan 09, 2008)

New Tutorial : Using the SceneGraph API

There is a nice little tutorial on using the SceneGraph API. (Jan 09, 2008)

Introducing the SceneGraph Project

Been There, Scene That: Part 2

And now, for the stunning conclusion of my previous blog entry. In this week's exciting climax, we'll go over some of the new, cool elements in the scene graph animation engine and end with a discussion of what it all means (life, animation - all of that). — Chet Haase
(Jan 09, 2008)

Swing links of the week: January 6, 2008

Here are some Swing links that you might have missed during this week: Luan O’Carroll writes about updates to the rollup bar component from the XUI framework. The functionality of the component seems to lie somewhere between the task pane container / collapsible panels of SwingX and the collapsed panels of docking frameworks. The links to [...] (Jan 07, 2008)

Youtube player in JDIC browser

At Geertjan's suggestion, I tried his Youtube modules with my JDIC integration. Worked out of the box, no problem. I didn't have to change a thing. Nice when that happens, eh? — Rich Unger
(Jan 07, 2008)

Fractal flames #1

The Substance watermark pack comes with the functionality to generate fractal flame watermarks. While it takes considerably more time to create these watermarks (about 15-20 seconds on a decent machine), the visual results are certainly worth it, even outside the original goal of using the fractal flame images to add watermarking capabilities to Swing applications. [...] (Jan 06, 2008)

Painting vertical texts with subpixel anti-aliasing

Sometimes, the application design requires displaying vertical (rotated) texts. While this is not a common requirement, and the usage of vertical texts must be kept to the absolutely minimum, one should be aware of the possible technical solutions and the problems associated with them. This entry shows two possible solutions, accompanied by the screenshots and [...] (Jan 05, 2008)

Been There, Scene That

Part 1 of a two-part article on the animation engine in the Scene Graph project. A moving tale. — Chet Haase
(Jan 04, 2008)

Substance theme pack updated

In addition to about twenty core Substance themes, the theme pack plugin provides even more themes to create a unique look for your Swing applications. When you put the binary plugin in the classpath, the additional themes become available in the getAllThemes() API, and you can use them just like any other core theme. As part [...] (Jan 04, 2008)

JavaFX Script and a New Key Animation Framework

JavaFX Script is getting a more comprehensive Key Animation framework. More.... (Jan 03, 2008)

Java Posse #157 - Holiday Special

Holiday SpecialFully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com Join us for the Java Posse Roundup 2008 in Crested Butte from March 4th to 7th and be a part of sessions like this yourself! http://www.mindviewinc.com/Conferences/JavaPo (Jan 03, 2008)

Native text rendering in Swing applications - ready, steady, go!

The subject of native text rendering in Swing applications has been introduced on this blog about six weeks ago, and I already described some of the implementation details. The devil is, of course, in details (unless you’re working on whizzy demoes), and i’ve spent the last month working on all the issues mentioned in the [...] (Jan 02, 2008)

The OLPC and Java

I got myself (and another deserving child somewhere out there) a "One Laptop Per Child" for christmas. Here is my experience with Java on the device, followed by some year-end musings what this all means. — Cay Horstmann
(Dec 31, 2007)

Swing links of the week: December 30, 2007

Here are some Swing links that you might have missed during this week: Nazmul Idris has created a tutorial on SwingX painters. The painters generated quite a lot of heated discussion and development about half a year ago, and there were passionate talks about restructuring the entire Swing painting pipeline around the painters. It seems that [...] (Dec 30, 2007)

Resource : JavaPolis JavaFX Session (PDF)

James Weaver has made his Javapolis session (PDF) available. More... (Dec 30, 2007)

Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine: Yet Another Successful JavaPolis

JavaPolis is over and it was yet another great event. I've had many people tell me they liked it more than JavaOne. It must be either the comfy theater chairs or the size of the conference (easy to talk chat with speakers and conference attendees).

It must be a habit of releasing NetBeans versions for JavaPolis (4.0 in 2004). This time NetBeans 6.0 is really here and what a distance between those releases!

My GlassFish presentation went well, very well even given I had totally crashed my aging laptop two hours before I started. Good thing I had my presentation on a USB stick and that the GF download was reasonable in size. As Jean-François wrote, the audience was good (the competition was pretty stiff) and people stayed throughout the presentation and there were some interesting questions after the talk. The startup time of the current v3 drew some nice "wow" 's and applause which I almost did expect (I'm must be spoiled after showing this too many times ;-).

Of course I met a lot of people and I'm not even going to try to name them all. I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised to see the attendance in talks such as Java EE 6, EJB 3.1, and JPA 2.0. They were really crowed. Spring seemed less present than previous years and there was no BEA in sight (they used to be one of the main sponsors).

Finally, it was great to see Neal and Josh on stage together, but it seems the agreement didn't last long.

(Dec 18, 2007)

Laird Nelson: Useful Swing Thing #1

The first of (hopefully) a series of quick, useful Swing tips. — Laird Nelson
(Dec 17, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Swing links of the week: December 16, 2007

Here are some Swing links that you might have missed during this week: Dave Gilbert of JFreeChart project follows in the footsteps of Google Chart and provides a servlet that generates embeddable chart images for web applications. While not strictly relevant to Swing, it employs the same approach as outlined by Jacobus Steenkamp in this article [...] (Dec 17, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: File viewer panel control for Swing applications

This entry shows the capabilities of file viewer panel control from the upcoming version 3.0 of Flamingo component suite project. — Kirill Grouchnikov
(Dec 15, 2007)

Project SceneGraph Unveiled (Presentation) - Updated

A new project that enables scene graphs in JavaFX Script and Java (more generally) is now available. Check out the presentation...

(Dec 11, 2007)

Alex Potochkin: Making A Rainbow: Spotlight effect and soft clipping

Detailed tutorial on implementing advanced effect for the our J1 session's demo...

Kirill Grouchnikov: Substance animation primer

Lately, there have been quite a few postings on the mailing list of Substance look-and-feel that ask how to change the default animation settings. This can be required for a number of reasons, including performance speedup and proper effects on custom application renderers. Following in the footsteps of the painter primer and skinner primer, the [...] (Nov 29, 2007)

Jan Haderka: SwingX in central maven repository

SwingX version 0.9 and 0.9.1 have been uploaded to central maven repository. — Jan Haderka
(Nov 28, 2007)

Invitation: Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days

Are you a mobile application or platform developer and interested in connecting with other developers to share ideas, best practices, and technical know-how? Join us at Sun Microsystems in Santa Clara for a mini-conference, January 23-24th.

James Gosling will be delivering the keynote.

Two-day immersion in mobile and embedded Java technology with an information-packed agenda
Networking and brainstorming opportunities
Access to the entire conference program and all sessions
Access to archived sessions and content after the event (subject to technical and organizational limitations)
Continental breakfast and box lunch each day

(Nov 21, 2007)

Jan Haderka: SwingX 0.9.1 released

It is barely a month ago that I announced the SwingX 0.9 release. Since then SwingX has seen renewed interest from users and some major work done on the backlog by its commiters. Due to this and due to the fact that we have managed to fix about 75 issues within last month, I'm happy to announce next release! (Nov 20, 2007)

Geertjan Wielenga: Filthy Rich Clients: The Book Review

It's been a few months since the release of Chet Haase and Romain Guy's "Filthy Rich Clients: Developing Animated and Graphical Effects for Desktop Java Applications". The cover of my copy of the book is bent and buckled, the edges of the pages are frayed, bread crumbs and chocolate smears have enriched its pages, and there are multiple bookmarks peeking out at various angles... perhaps the time has come to pass judgement on its content.

(Nov 14, 2007)

Cafe au Lait : Apple has posted a developer preview of Java for Mac OS X 10.4, Release 6 on the Apple Developer Connection (first born child required).

Apple has posted a developer preview of Java for Mac OS X 10.4, Release 6 on the Apple Developer Connection (first born child required). This release updates the Java on Mac OS X Tiger to versions 1.5.0_13 and 1.4.2_16. Still no sign of Java 6. :-( (Nov 14, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Flamingo component suite 3.0 - the teaser

There hasn't been a lot of new content on this blog over the past three weeks, and this entry is just to keep you in sync with what you can expect from the next development drop of the components in the Flamingo component suite. Here is a partial screenshot of the controls (ribbon, buttons and galleries)... (Nov 13, 2007)

Chet Haase: Submit a JavaOne Proposal NOW!

Tick, tick, tick.... The JavaOne Call for Papers closes on November 16th. It's only an abstract. Just one little abstract. And it's free! Come on - you can do it... (Nov 07, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Substance skinning primer

As Substance look-and-feel nears the official release 4.1 (scheduled for November 12th), i’m working on the missing documentation. This entry talks about the using the painter layer to skin custom components. As mentioned in the painter overview, most of the Substance painting logic is abstracted into a set of painters. This not only allows preventing duplicate [...] (Nov 07, 2007)

Alexander Potochkin: Debug Swing repainting

Implementing a nice visual indication during repainting of Swing components — Alexander Potochkin
(Nov 06, 2007)

Fabrizio Giudici: Next talks about NASA World Wind and other geographic tecnologies

In the latest months I've presented blueMarine at a lot of conferenced and meetings, so now I'm going to change a bit the focus (but don't panic :-) blueMarine will be again at the center of a JavaPolis presentation). The... — Fabrizio Giudici
(Nov 04, 2007)

Michael Grev: MiG Layout 3.0 (Free Swing/SWT Layout Manager)

MiG Layout is for Java developers writing GUI layouts by hand that wants simplicity, power and automatic per platform fidelity. If you are dissatisfied with the current layout managers in Swing and SWT, MiGLayout solves all your layout problems.

Unlike JGoodies' FormLayout and Clearthought's TableLayout - MiGLayout solves all your layouts with equal ease in a way that is easy to change and maintain. You will understand how the layout will look like when looking at the code.

Version 3.0 adds better and more automatic support for Resolution Independence. It also fixes all known bugs.

Visit the MiG Layout Site where you can find Web Start Demos and full Documentation. (Nov 05, 2007)

JavaOne Conference 2008: Call for Papers

It's that time again! The deadline is November 16, just around the corner. (Oct 31, 2007)

Product Update: Colorspace 1.7

(Nov 05, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Swing links of the week: November 4, 2007

Here are some Swing links that you might have missed during this week: Jan Erik Paulsen is working on a new RIA tool named Amanda. Some nice screenshots that use the Titanium look-and-feel that is based on Substance. The release notes for Java 5 on Leopard include a few new client properties that can be used to [...] (Nov 05, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Overview of Substance painters

As Substance look-and-feel nears the official release 4.1 (scheduled for November 12th), i’m working on the missing documentation. This entry talks about the painter layer in Substance. Painter encapsulates a common painting logic. For example, in Substance, selected elements in lists, tables, trees and menus are painted with the same gradients. So, instead of replicating this [...] (Nov 04, 2007)

Joshua Marinacci: My First Screencast: Visually build an RSS reader using NetBeans 6

In this screencast I will show you how to use a simple RSS reader bean to build a feed reading application with almost no code. The screencast is 12 minutes long, but I could build and deploy the app in about 4 minutes if I wasn't talking. That's how productive NetBeans 6 can make you. — Joshua Marinacci
(Nov 02, 2007)

Jayson Falkner: Building a Java applet-based game -- why don't we see more of them?

My younger brother and I decided to try and make a viral video game. The sort of game that can suck hours away from your life. The type of game that passes the boring times at work. The type of game that normally seems to be coded in Flash.... Here we'll document how successful Java seemed to be in making this game. — Jayson Falkner
(Nov 02, 2007)

Julian Doherty: Still no Java 1.6 on Mac OS X Leopard

Leopard is out, and most development based news sites are abuzz with the scandal that OS X still doesn't support Java 1.6

Don't have much to add to the flames, except to say I called it.

(Nov 01, 2007)

Ben Galbraith: More on Leopard's Java 1.5: The Release Notes Michael Urban Should Have Read

A journey through OS X 10.5 Leopard's release notes shows some pretty interesting tidbits. (Oct 31, 2007)

Charles Ditzel: JavaFX Script Second Tutorial, Groovy, Apple and NetBeans 6 GPLv2

There is a bunch of stuff happening. For starters, James Weaver's second tutorial on JavaFX Script is out. There are two new Groovy intro tutorials and Apple has caused a firestorm amongst Java developers. Finally - NetBeans 6 has been GPLv2'ed. (Oct 30, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Why i don't care about Java 6 on Leopard

It looks like anywhere you go in the Java blogosphere, people are only talking about Java 6 (or lack of thereof) on Leopard. Some say that the only reason they bought Leopard was for Java 6, some say that their honeymoon with Apple is over, and some say that Java 6 will be available shortly [...] (Oct 29, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Java desktop wishlist for 2008

While the Java blogosphere is raging with debates on closures, properties and other negligible language-level features, the client-side battle is still fought between Microsoft, Adobe and Apple. And while finally Sun decided to step in with JavaFX and improved applet handling, this will change little without the tools for content handling. (Oct 26, 2007)

Patrick Keegan: Binding JComboBox and Getting a Reasonable Display Value

Just a few days after I published my first major foray into explaining Beans Binding in NetBeans, I received some feedback asking how to populate a JComboBox with reasonable display values from a data source. I had been wondering the same thing. With the help of Honza Stola (explanation plus code snippet) and the trusty Beans Binding Javadoc (available from NetBeans by choosing Help > Javadoc References > Beans Binding), here's my stab at it. — Patrick Keegan
(Oct 26, 2007)

Swing Sighting: Paralog

Paralog is the world's leading skydiving logbook and flight analysis software made by skydivers for skydivers. Paralog downloads jump details from most electronic freefall loggers. Paralog also supports direct downloads from most GPS units.

(Oct 26, 2007)

Chet Haase: Move It!

Introducing Animated Transitions, a new library for the easy creation of animated segues between application states. Begin here, but then check out the java.net article and project sites, and then go use the darn thing. (Oct 23, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Better visuals for the JRibbon component, part I

I;s been more than two years since i first started working on all-Java version of the Office 2007 ribbon component (see part 1, part 2 and part 3). Since then, there have been quite a few visual improvements in the Substance look-and-feel... (Oct 23, 2007)

Swing links of the week: October 21, 2007

Here are some Swing links that you might have missed during this week: A three-part series by Eric Burke on do' and do not't of scroll panes. Read part 1, part 2 and part 3. A good rule of thumb would be to never use scroll panes for wrapping UI controls. Only use them for wrapping... (Oct 22, 2007)

Shannon Hickey: Beans Binding 1.1.1 Beats 1.0's Butt, Bigtime

Shannon Hickey announces the 1.1.1 release of Beans Binding, with a drastic increase in performance. (Oct 19, 2007)

Ken Russell on the new Java Plugin

After we posted about the news that Sun has rewritten the browser Java plugin system, we got a chance to sit down with the lead engineer on the project, Ken Russell... (Oct 18, 2007)

Nazmul Idris: Animated Transitions & Glass Pane Tutorials

Check out these two tutorials by Nazmul: How to use the AnimatedTransition API (SwingX and Timingframework) and How to use glass pane for animation (SwingX and Timingframework). (Oct 18, 2007)

Dummy' guide to drawing raw images in Java 2D

A couple months ago I signed up to do a presentation on concurrency for the St. Louis Java User Group, which happened last night. I wanted to explore a bunch of techniques and issues but stick to one domain, so I chose generation of the Mandelbrot set, just for fun. It takes me way back [...] (Oct 12, 2007)

Charles Ditzel: OpenJFX Compiler : Tom Ball Talks About the JavaFX Script Compiler

A JavaFX Script compiler will change the performance characteristics of JavaFX Script. There is a nice interview with Tom Ball of Sun where he talks about it. More.... (Oct 12, 2007)

Apple's removed the Java 1.6 preview form the Apple Developer Connection, possibly because they expect to ship it with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in a couple of weeks, or possibly because they've decided n

Apple's removed the Java 1.6 preview form the Apple Developer Connection, possibly because they expect to ship it with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in a couple of weeks, or possibly because they've decided not to ship it at all. With Apple, it could go either away. (Oct 16, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Swing links of the week: October 14, 2007

Here are some Swing links that you might have missed during this week: A very informative posting on the AppFramework mailing list from Hans Muller that includes advice by Shannon Hickey on handling uncaught exceptions in EDT. There are three alternatives, none of them providing a complete solution (unfortunately): Toolkit.getSystemEventQueue.push() with a custom event queue. The “sun.awt.exception.handler” [...] (Oct 15, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: New Creme Coffee skin for Swing applications

Just before the feature freeze of Substance 4.1, i added a new Coffee Cream skin that is based on the existing Creme skin and the Ubuntu’ish brown active theme. If you want to take it for a spin, click on the WebStart button below and change the skin to Coffee Cream from the “Skins” menu: To [...] (Oct 15, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Getting ready for the Substance 4.1 feature freeze

Over the past releases of Substance look and feel I found that it helps to have a well-defined release lifecycle and schedule. The usual cycle for a minor release is 12 weeks long, with last two weeks being the release candidate stage and the two weeks before that (a month before the final release) being [...] (Oct 12, 2007)

Mark Reinhold: Publishing code reviews

One of the engineering practices that’s served the JDK development team well for many years now is that of peer-based code reviews. What’s the most expedient way to enable any OpenJDK contributor to publish code-review materials on the open web for all to see?

(Oct 11, 2007)

Alexander Potochkin: Why I don't use Swing hacks (continuation)

Overview of hacks in validation overlays implementations — Alexander Potochkin
(Oct 09, 2007)

Alexander Schunk: Java 6: Update N Nice but

I have tried the Update N of Java 6 today and rated it with 2. 2 because i was not able to get the Nimbus look and feel running on my Win XP machine (Oct 09, 2007)

Teppefall Labs: SVG and Darkstar FX

I have been playing a little with Kirill's SVG to Java transcoder and then manually converting the Java code into Javascript based Darkstar FX renderer's. Very tedious, but good fun nevertheless. I had less success with the SVG to JavaFX... (Oct 09, 2007)

Geertjan: Marilyn in a J2SE TreeTableView

At the end of yesterday's blog entry, hilz asked about multiple nodes in a TreeTableView... (Oct 08, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Rainbow 1.1 - SVG browser for remote SVN repositories

The new version of Rainbow SVG browser is available. Now you can browse remote SVN repositories with regular and compressed SVG content. (Oct 08, 2007)

Juan Carlos Herrera: World's Smallest Duke

Bruno Lowagie has released iText 2.0.6, an open source Java library for creating documents in PDF, XML, HTML, and RTF.

Bruno Lowagie has released iText 2.0.6, an open source Java library for creating documents in PDF, XML, HTML, and RTF. It can also convert XML documents into any of these formats. This release adds support for JPEG2000 and fixes bugs. iText is published under the Mozilla Public License. (Oct 10, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Rainbow 1.1 - SVG browser for remote SVN repositories

Those of you who came to the session (PDF link) that Alex and I have presented at JavaOne 2006 saw the application that we wrote to illustrate different animation, translucency and transition techniques. The project itself was named Rainbow and all the bits were made available immediately after the session. Unlike many other demo applications [...] (Oct 08, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Swing links of the week: October 7, 2007

Here are some Swing links that you might have missed during this week: “Fling Scroller” article on java.net by Jan Haderka. Shows how easy it is to implement motion-based scrolling in lists with Timing Framework and a little bit of math. The comments show a similar approach that works on any scroll pane. The new Expression Layout [...] (Oct 07, 2007)

Fabrizio Giudici: A quick question about the "Customer JRE"...

Mark Reinhold: Constitutional conversations commence

The OpenJDK Governance Board held its ﬁrst two meetings this past July. The minutes have just been posted; herewith the highlights.

(Oct 04, 2007)

Cafe au Lait: Sun has posted an early access release of the consumer JRE for Windows promised at JavaOne.

Sun has posted an early access release of the consumer JRE for Windows promised at JavaOne. This early access release includes the Java QuickStarter, deployment toolkit, Nimbus look and feel, and hardware acceleration for graphics. The missing piece is the Java kernel. (Oct 10, 2007)

Charles Ditzel: New JavaFX Script Tutorial : JavaFX Script Functions and Operations

There is a new JavaFX Script tutorial which covers functions, operations and bind. More... (Oct 04, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Swing Breadcrumb Bar for browsing remote SVN repositories

Early last year, i wrote about an outside contribution to the Flamingo component suite. Back then, Rick Jelliffe of Topologi has graciously donated his Breadcrumb Bar component under the BSD license. You can see breadcrumb bars pretty much everywhere on the web, and Vista explorer uses it as the default representation of your current location [...] (Oct 03, 2007)

Danny Coward: Consumerizing Java on the Desktop

Heard the early roll of thunder about a project called the 'Consumer JRE' last JavaOne ? Yesterday it came a step closer to reality: We've released an early access version of an major update to the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) on Windows platforms, specifically focusing on features of the JRE needed by consumer content. (You may have noticed we're pretty into that these days, and ...

(Oct 03, 2007)

Richard Bair: Nimbus Bugs

Recently, the Nimbus L&F; became available with the early access builds of Java 6 update 5. We have some folks try it out, but not know where to file bugs. Ok. So this is going to be a boring blog, but I wanted to get the word out on how to help us debug Nimbus. — Richard Bair
(Oct 02, 2007)

Evan Summers: Gooey Table Model

We present a generic table model with a list of "model beans" and simplistic "beans binding" facilitated by java.beans.PropertyDescriptor. — Evan Summers
(Oct 02, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Resolution independent Swing, part III - miscellania

Continuing the series on the support for high-DPI monitors in Swing applications and having covered the big areas in the first two entries (alignment and borders), it’s time for miscellaneous stuff. There are quite a few less-defined areas that should be addressed by a look-and-feel that aims to provide complete high-DPI support. Let’s look at [...] (Oct 02, 2007)

Jasper Potts: Nimbus Early Access

Finally a version you can all go and play with. Nimbus is coming out as part of "Java SE 6 update N" formerly known as the "Consumer Release" and "Project Hamburg". Well whatever it is called it contains a decent version of the new Nimbus look and feel...

(Oct 01, 2007)

Chet Haase: Early Access Granted: Java SE 6 Update N

Java SE 6 Update N (formerly known as "The Consumer JRE"), the update released aimed at making Desktop Java more consumer-friendly, is available for early access testing. Try it out and let us know how it works for you. (Oct 01, 2007)

Teppefall Labs: Colorspace 1.6, Layout 3.3, FX 3.3 and Darkstar 20070930

New features:

This is a library update with some compatibility fixes.

Substance 4.0
Rhino Javascript 1.6
BSF 2.4

(Oct 01, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Java SE 6 Update N. Is that the real name now?

The project formerly known as "Consumer JRE" is now "Java SE 6 Update N". (Oct 01, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: First look at Nimbus and "Java SE 6 Update N"

A mildly unexpected announcement on Jasper's blog (a little earlier than hinted previously) that leads to this page on JDK 6.0 project unveils the first binary drop of Consumer JRE, or "Java SE 6 Update N" as it will be officially known. While the previous name was very catchy, the new name is very bland.... (Oct 01, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Playing nice with Gnome desktop

A few months ago i wrote about Mac-specific font policy in Substance look-and-feel that makes all Substance-powered Swing application pick the correct font sizes when running under Mac OS. In the past few days I've added a font policy for Gnome desktops (Ubuntu among the rest), following a bug report... (Sep 30, 2007)

Romain Guy: Translucent shaped Windows (Extreme GUI Makeover)

When we showed off the REALiTY demo for Extreme GUI Makeover 2007 at JavaOne, I demonstrated translucent shaped windows in Java. The code behind this effect is a lot like other effects from the same demo. In REALiTY, translucent shaped windows are used to show more details about the selected table row. (Sep 28, 2007)

Tom Marble: Clearing Encumbrances

As you know we have some encumbrances with OpenJDK. There has been some confusion about this so let me restate that Sun has released all the source code for OpenJDK under the GPL that we can. As a result we make some binary plugs available so that you can build OpenJDK. Nevertheless it is our hope to get to 100% Freeand100% Java ...

(Sep 28, 2007)

Josiah Hester: Ultimate Java Image Manipulation

Images are the staple of any graphical application, whether on the web or on the desk, images are everywhere. Having the ability to control and manipulate these images is a crucial skill that is absolutely necessary for any graphical artist, designer, or Game Engineer. This article will get you, the aspiring artist, professional designer, or amateur hobbyist, the foundations to be able to manipulate any image to your will. (Sep 28, 2007)

Mikael Grev: Resolution Independent GUIs. How to Do It, and How It Looks

Resolution independence is touted both in Windows Vista and Mac OS X 10.5. But what does it mean and how is Java doing in this important area? I say important, not because we all are about to buy HiDPI screens, but because Java must support it to feel 'modern' and follow the evolution...

(Sep 27, 2007)

Alexander Potochkin: Why I don't use Swing hacks (in production code)

The recommended techniques seem to be too boring for some people, when you use a hack it's like you apply a hidden knowledge, isn't it? — Alexander Potochkin
(Sep 27, 2007)

Simon Morris: Why Rich Internet Apps Will Fail

If I'm judging the current mood of the industry right, the future will bring a massive increase in mobility. Applications and data will follow the user around, from office to home and from PC to PDA, thanks to the much hyped RIA. But what issues may need addressing before we cast off the ball-n-chain of the locally installed application? — Simon Morris
(Sep 27, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Resolution independent Swing, part I - alignment and baseline

I first touched on the subject of resolution-independent Swing UIs and automatic support for high-DPI monitors about six months ago. This area has been pioneered by Karsten in his Looks family of look-and-feels. The code from Looks was used as a starting point of supporting resolution independence in Substance look-and-feel, and the last two versions [...] (Sep 27, 2007)

Joshua Marinacci: The votes are in

I've got a free moment here at the MidWest Tech Days (and if you are in the MidWest you should be here too!) so I thought I would tally the votes generated by my previous blog: You vote for your... — Joshua Marinacci
(Sep 26, 2007)

JFXBuilder: Animation Along a Path in JavaFX/JFXBuilder

The JavaFX app below was written using JFXBuilder’s new path animation feature. This allows you to draw any kind of path you can think of, and then animate other shapes along that path. You can use any of JFXBuilder’s drawing tools to construct a path that you want some shape to follow in your animation. For the example pictured in the screenshot, I went to google maps and found an interesting looking freeway clover-leaf. After dragging the image into JFXBuilder, I drew some paths with the pencil tool on top of the image and refined them by editing the path’s control points until I got exactly the paths I wanted each car image to follow.

(Sep 25, 2007)

Charles Ditzel: JavaFX Code Samples : CRUDfx = JavaFX + Derby + JDBC

This is a JavaFX-flavored CRUD application. CRUDfx is a JavaFX app centered around a travel database on Derby. More... (Sep 25, 2007)

Remi Forax: Mixing property language support and bean bindings

Recently, Shannon posts version 1.0 of beanbindings, even if this version is not ready for production use, it is stable enough to create a small demo mixing property language support and beanbindings. The idea is to create a bean... — Rémi Forax
(Sep 24, 2007)

Romain Guy: Filthy Rich Samples in NetBeans

Geertjan recently asked Chet and I to choose a few of our Filthy Rich Demos to be included in the NetBeans Sample Catalog. Geertjan also started working on a new NetBeans module that lets you create a new project from one or more samples. This module can now open all of our demos at [...] (Sep 24, 2007)

Chet Haase: Shutup About the Book, Already

I have nothing to say about our Filthy Rich Clients book today. But other people do. (Sep 19, 2007)

Fabrizio Giudici: Good advice: buy that book

I received my copy of "Filthy Rich Clients" by Chet Haase and Romain Guy a few days ago (now in good company with "Rich Client Programming"), but until this morning I didn't find the time to read it. So, just after... — Fabrizio Giudici
(Sep 19, 2007)

Sun's posted the first official feature complete beta of NetBeans 6.0, its pure Java IDE for various platforms.

Sun's posted the first official feature complete beta of NetBeans 6.0, its pure Java IDE for various platforms. I spent a little time playing with it, and it's definitely getting there. It's quite clean, overall, and serious competition for Eclipse, at least at the base level. I can't quite find my way around it as easily as in Eclipse--I never did figure out how to make one project reference another--but that's just a function of my years of experience with Eclipse. For someone starting from scratch, I have little doubt NetBeans would be a much easier product to use. The biggest flaw I noted was that some of the menu items like "Options" bring up dialog boxes but don't end in .... Otherwise, I couldn't find any problems. (Sep 19, 2007)

Romain Guy: Another Free Chapter

InfoQ just published a review of Filthy Rich Clients. This review contains a link to chapter 14 of the book, Timing Framework Fundamentals. Enjoy! (Sep 17, 2007)

Charles Ditzel: Killer Resource - Filthy Rich Clients - 82 Swing/Java2D Examples and More

What a killer resource. Swing and Java2D are dominating Java client side development and this book provides an excellent set of examples (82 of them!) that will help you in your efforts. (Sep 16, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Introducing Strider

The previous teaser post showed a small video with “ripple” effects - an application showing a ripple overlay with waves originating on mouse click, bouncing off component borders and decaying over time, along with the superposition effects. It gives me a great pleasure to announce the first alpha drop of the Strider project (code-named Alento). (Sep 16, 2007)

Fabrizio Giudici: Work in progress: ForceTen

By the end of the year, blueMarine should hopefully spin off another sub-project: ForceTen, focused on the world of map rendering and geotagging...

Charles Ditzel: Two Tasty Bits : Java and TV & JavaFX and Bluetooth

Two tasty bits - Java and the TV industry (a multimedia session from JavaOne 2007 and Bruno has provided a nice integration of JavaFX Script and Bluetooth... (Sep 16, 2007)

Joshua Marinacci: See me speak about JavaFX at the Midwest Java Technology Days

Every year lots of developers come to San Francisco for JavaOne. More than fifteen thousand I think. But even more don't come to JavaOne; which might be a good thing since there are over four million of us Java developers... — Joshua Marinacci
(Sep 15, 2007)

Charles Ditzel: The Imminent Arrival of Something Really Java-Cool

Jasper Potts has stirred up the world. In a good way. He has announced the soon-to-happen arrival of something really cool. It isn't just the thing that's arriving that is really cool - but the thing that built the thing that is cool ;-) More... (Sep 14, 2007)

Joshua Marinacci: JavaFX != JavaFX Script

I recently gave a presentation at the Portland Java Users Group about Java FX. After talking to some of the fine members of PJUG I realize that there is a lot of confusion about JavaFX and JavaFX script. JavaFX Script... — Joshua Marinacci
(Sep 10, 2007)

Geertjan Wielenga: Ingredients for a Cool Life with Java and Swing

For a cool life with Java and Swing, take one computer and two books. Start up the first, and open the others. Start reading. Then apply what you read. Satisfaction guaranteed. Here's a summary, showing the two books in the context in which they were meant to be used:

On Amazon, you can buy the two together at a special price. At Sun Microsystems Press, you can buy them at a 30% discount. The sunglasses you'll have to get yourself somewhere. Laptop too.

(Sep 10, 2007)

Tim Boudreau: The NetBeans Mobile is half way across the U.S.

In Avoca, Iowa. Travelling is always an adventure, and this is no exception. — Tim Boudreau
(Sep 10, 2007)

Charles Ditzel: JavaFX Script: Two New Tutorials, New JNLP Demo

There are two new JavaFX tutorials - one on setting up client-server communications using JAX-WS and the other a very basic introduction. The other news is an entry from Chris Oliver highlighting JavaFX optimization possibilities. More.... (Sep 09, 2007)

Java Posse #141 - Roundup 07 Session - Desktop and Web

Roundup 2007 Session - Desktop and Web Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com Recorded at the Java Posse Roundup 2007. Since this was recorded, the landscape has changed a bit, with Adobe Apollo being renamed to Adobe AIR, (Sep 08, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Supporting GroupLayout baseline

GroupLayout was introduced in the middle of 2005 and later was added to JDK 6.0. It is the default layout manager used by NetBeans UI editor (code-named Matisse), and while the code using the GroupLayout tends to be very verbose and unreadable, the visual results are very pleasing as compared to other core Swing layout [...] (Sep 08, 2007)

Joshua Marinacci: Nimbus Nears Completion

My friends back at the Swing ranch have been working very hard on the new Nimbus look and feel for Swing. When I first saw it my only complaint was that I couldn't get my grubby little hands on it... — Joshua Marinacci
(Sep 08, 2007)

Geertjan Wielenga: 82 New NetBeans Samples... Free!

Chet and Romain's "Filthy Rich Clients" teaches you how to create stunning visual and animated effects with Swing and Java 2D. By the end, you'll know all about graphics and animation fundamentals in Java, as well as advanced rendering techniques. Interestingly, the book's website, http://www.filthyrichclients.org/, provides a page from which you can download all the samples discussed in the book. And... all those samples, 82 in fact, are NetBeans projects! They're all quite small and really focused on one specific aspect, so they're really useful when you're learning about these things. (Sep 08, 2007)

Jasper Potts: Nimbus almost done

Finally we are almost done with Nimbus and I am very pleased with the way it looks. There are many small details that need to be pollished and a couple of big ones like tabs but they will all be done by the time it gets released. I thought it might be time to tease [...] (Sep 07, 2007)

Romain Guy: The Secret Behind Nimbus

Jasper just posted a blog entry in which he explains that Nimbus is almost done. That is exciting. Even more exciting is how Nimbus was implemented. Nimbus was built entirely with shapes and vectors in a visual editing tool built as a NetBeans module. This let Jasper and Richard draw every single component, even the [...] (Sep 08, 2007)

Shannon Hickey: Beans Binding 1.0 Released

After months of re-architecture, based on feedback from the expert group and community members, Shannon Hickey announces a 1.0 release of Beans Binding. (Sep 06, 2007)

Tim Boudreau: The NetBeans Mobile is Alive

Well, the graphics are on, and the NetBeans Mobile is now officially a big honkin' truck with NetBeans logos on it!

Getting ready and loaded up is taking a little longer than I had hoped (I'm just a typical engineer underestimating how long work will take :-)) - so I expect to be on the road on Monday. I'll make it a short day/shakedown cruise, and plan to end up in Salt Lake City on Tuesday night. Two days later I'll be visiting some folks in Milwaukee.

(Sep 05, 2007)