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 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE™) 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.)

First Class Drag and Drop Support in Mustang

Shannon Hickey introduces major enhancements to Swing Drag and Drop in Mustang, and also recounts his recent once-in-a-lifetime visit to Saint Petersburg, Russia, with pictures from the trip. — Shannon Hickey
(2006-01-02T15:41-08:00)

Two new flash demos and NetBeans Module update

The community is awesome to provide feedback about quality and features. The coments left to the previous blog, made me improve the NetBeans Module Startup Settings I am developing, see the screenshot. I created two flash demos to show how to add custom swing widgets to the palette manager, the other flash demo shows how to use GridbagLayout and Freedesign (aka: Matisse) each one with different JPanels, but inside one JPanel (or JFrame). — Claudio Miranda
(2005-12-29T22:57-08:00)

Swinging Java IDEs

After IntelliJ and NetBeans have been decorated with pictures of scantily clad women and rhino-shaped "Apply" buttons, it's JDeveloper's turn. — Kirill Grouchnikov
(2005-12-29T11:05-08:00)

JAI 1.1.3-beta Webstart binaries now available

The Java Advanced Imaging 1.1.3-beta is now available for immediate download on java.net. Please go to the JAI project home page at https://jai.dev.java.net and click on the Downloads link. The changes in JAI 1.1.3-beta with respect to JAI 1.1.3-alpha are listed in the JAI 1.1.3-beta README file on the binary builds page.
(Dec 23, 2005)

NetBeans Look and Feel Competition

Have you customised your NetBeans IDE look & feel? Are you using a non-standard look & feel, or are you using the Substance plug-in to change NetBeans' look? Have you tweaked the L&F; in some other way? If so, share your customisation and you could win one of three iPod Nanos, 10 USB flash memory sticks or 30 NetBeans T-Shirts! Competition details are here.
(Dec 23, 2005)

Spicing up your JTabbedPane - part II

The second part of the series that describes the additional capabilities that you can get on your tabbed panes. This entry describes vetoable close buttons and vertical tabs. — Kirill Grouchnikov
(2005-12-22T12:49-08:00)

Automated visual verification is hard

With the flat 2D still-life style components we have today it's hard to automate visual verification. What are we going to do when GUI's are dancing and singing away? How will we be able to automatically verify it's dancing the right way and not stumbling around? — David Herron
(2005-12-21T16:47-08:00)

Mustang Release Contents (JSR 270): Early Draft Review

Just in time for the holidays, the Early Draft Review version of the JSR 270 specification is now available. — Mark Reinhold
(2005-12-21T12:08-08:00)

JavaLobby: 2005 "renaissance in desktop Java"

JavaLobby's Rick Ross said some nice things about desktop Java in his Obligatory "Year In Review" Column: Performance gains and enhancements in key Java libraries have led to a virtual renaissance in desktop Java. Examples of what you can achieve with Swing (such as those at Romain Guy's blog) prove that Java is actually quite well suited for building up-to-date desktop applications. By the way, you can see Romain's blog entries here and here.
(Dec 21, 2005)

JPasswordField with an empty echo character: the fix

Learn why my last attempt at a password field with an empty space echo character failed and how to fix it. And of course a demo is thrown in for good measure. — Scott Violet
(2005-12-19T15:38-08:00)

3D Java Strategy Game Reaches the Winner's Circle
Realtime strategy game Tribal Trouble from OddLabs.com was ranked number two in the just announced "Game of the Year" results from GameTunnel.com. Tribal Trouble gained the honor for being fun, entertaining, and easy to play. We're sure that the fact that the game is pure Java had a hand in the victory too. Check out the screenshots here. Vikings!

JRockit 5.0 on desktop - show me the money

After numerous press releases showing that BEA's JRockit is the fastest JVM around, I have decided to try it out for a desktop application. The result - it may be the fastest for the application servers, but it most certainly is not the best for the desktop. — Kirill Grouchnikov
(2005-12-13T08:24-08:00)

Substance 2.1 official release

Packed with a lot of new features (and a lot of bug fixes), Substance look-and-feel has reached the official release 2.1 — Kirill Grouchnikov
(2005-12-12T11:40-08:00)

JavaOne Excitement Is In the Air

It isn't holiday excitement that I am experiencing right now, but the thrill of having nearly 1400 papers to review for the 2006 JavaOne Conference. — Annette Vernon
(2005-12-07T16:37-08:00)

Swing Depot Update: InfoNode

We've just updated the screenshots in the InfoNode section of the Swing Depot's Component Suites page. The new pictures show the just-released version 1.4.0 of NNL Technology's InfoNode products.
(Dec 08, 2005)

JFreeChart 1.0.0 Released

A new version of JFreeChart, the very popular free charting library for the Java platform, is now available for download from http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/. You can run the JFreeChart Demo (no certificate required!) via Java Web Start. Don't miss the oddly hypnotic PieChart3DDemo2 (under Pie Charts); another interesting one is the DifferenceChartDemo2 (under Miscellaneous).
(Dec 07, 2005)

The Next Wave of GUIs: Project Matisse and NetBeans IDE 5.0

Project Matisse creators Scott Violet and Tomas Pavek discuss how the NetBeans IDE 5.0 simplifies development of GUIs and results in a cross-platform visual designer.
(Dec 07, 2005)

Swing Sightings Preview: JSwat 3.0

JSwat is a graphical Java debugger front-end that uses the Java Platform Debugger Architecture and is based on the NetBeans Platform. JSwat is open-source software, freely available in both binary and source code form. Its features include breakpoints with conditionals; colorized source code display with code navigator; movable display panels showing threads, call stack, visible variables, and loaded classes; command interface for more advanced features; and Java-like expression evaluation, including method invocation. Check out this screenshot.
(Dec 06, 2005)

Swing Pointers List Updated

Charles Ditzel has produced a new, improved version of Swing Pointers, his very handy page of links for developers using the Java SE platform to develop GUIs. He promises to keep it up-to-date and welcomes your e-mailed suggestions.
(Dec 06, 2005)

Variations of JPasswordField

Learn how to create alternate views of JPasswordField. In the proess I'll cover portions of Swing's text architecture. — Scott Violet
(2005-12-05T15:37-08:00)

NetBeans Performance Profiler - Now for the Mac!

Tor Norbye blogged Thursday that milestone 11 of the NetBeans Performance Profiler has a big new feature: support for Mac OS X! If you're a Mac user, please try out this feature and give them feedback.
(Dec 05, 2005)

JavaPolis 2005

JavaPolis 2005 is taking place next week. If you want to meet two new members of the Swing Team and see some cool stuff, come to Antwerp. — Romain Guy
(2005-12-05T02:49-08:00)

Swing Sightings Preview: RageWork

RageWork 2.4 is a cross-platform file manager designed to manage your files, documents, and resources, and to do a lot of cool things. The key features of this release are fast sub-folder access, quick searching, a filter view, the ability to split and merge files, WWW editor validators, auto file completion, auto-change encoding in text-based files, bookmarks for network clients, the ability to resume file transfers in FTP, auto-recognition of encoding in FTP, tooltips for folder description, and improvements to status, error messages, virtual folders, the UI, and performance. You can try it out using Java Web Start. Or just check out the screenshots: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
(Dec 02, 2005)

Featured Project: Scenic

The Scenic project, newly graduated from the JavaDesktop incubator, provides a scene-based 2D graphics library for the Java platform. (In a previous incarnation, Scenic was a C++ library that ran only on Linux.) The Scenic project owner would like users and testers; contributions are also welcome. See the Scenic project home for details.
(Dec 01, 2005)

Proposal for uniform support of third-party components in custom look-and-feels

This posting proposes an approach for uniform support of third-party components in custom look-and-feels. The approach has been successfully adopted in Liquid and Substance look-and-feels. — Kirill Grouchnikov
(2005-11-28T13:21-08:00)

Facade, gaming redefined

Every now and then, a group of few people come up with a bright idea that shakes the world of video games. Façade might just be one of them and it's Java powered. — Romain Guy
(2005-11-28T20:07-08:00)

Jake2 on Slashdot

Jake2, bytonic's Java 3D port of Quake2, has been featured in the Slashdot post Quake2 Ported to Java, Play Via the Web. [We previewed a Swing Sighting of Jake2 here last May; the full writeup is in Swing Sightings #22.] There's been lots of interesting feedback to the Slashdot post. Here's one quote: "Runs great on my 1.2 GHz G4 with 640 MB of RAM in OS X 10.4.3. ... This is the coolest use of Java I've ever seen."
(Nov 28, 2005)

Deliver Your Java Application in One-JAR!

[This blog entry from last week has had some interesting responses.] Packing a simple application I discovered I can't include the driver of the MySql into the JAR of my application. This is a feature of the JAR tool that force the users to download several files or to use an external unzip tool in order to unzip the files before running the aplication - very odd. — Felipe Gaucho
(2005-11-23T11:10-08:00)

Debugging Swing - is it really difficult ?

Do we need to invent something to make it easier, or it is not a problem at all ? — Alexander Potochkin
(2005-11-23T01:57-08:00)

Help Wanted: Intern to Spread the Word

If you're a student with a knack for creating Web content, do we have an internship for you! — Kathy Walrath
(2005-11-22T16:41-08:00)

Why the JEditorPane is important to the JavaHelp ContentViewer

With planning for the next realease of the JDK underway, swing development teams are looking at some promising changes that will impact the JavaHelp implementation. This blog looks at why the JEditorPane and the associated changes are important and why your vote as a JavaHelp user is important. — Roger Brinkley
(2005-11-22T13:06-08:00)

The Fast Way to $5000

eBay just lauched a developer challenge. Use NetBeans to get your unfair advantage. — Brian Leonard
(2005-11-18T18:14-08:00)

Changes to Actions in 1.6

Read up on the changes to Actions in 1.6. — Scott Violet
(2005-11-21T08:16-08:00)

Hardware Acceleration in Mustang

A recent thread on the Mustang Snapshots: Project Feedback forum has discussed graphics acceleration — the OpenGL pipeline, DirectX, and so on. Here's a nice quote (and no, we didn't pay linuxhippy to say this): In my eyes Java2d is one of the most powerful, fast and most stable rendering engines around - no commercial engine I know can provide this feature-richness nor performance.
(Nov 18, 2005)

Take the Swing Text Survey (Please!)

XHTML, JavaScript, plugins, and more: If you have opinions about the features Swing text components should support in the future, please take the Swing text survey. — Kathy Walrath
(2005-11-17T12:44-08:00)

Desktop Articles on java.sun.com

JFrame.add() contentPane Pain: The Complete Story

Early on in Swing's evolution we added a runtime exception that warned developers not to write JFrame.add(myComponent) and it has been raising hackles ever since. And it's my fault. Since Graham Hamilton covered my transgression in his My Favorite (Dead) Java Boilerplate blog, I thought I'd tell the complete story. — Hans Muller
(2005-11-16T11:35-08:00)

Swing Sightings Preview: LG's SavaJE-Based Cell Phone

SavaJE and LG have just announced a mobile phone (shipping in 2006) that will run the latest SavaJE software. Check out this screenshot. Everything you see on the screen is Java2D and Swing and the rest of desktop stack. Right down to the metal, the phone is pure Java. Here's a choice quote from the announcement: SavaJe OS opens wireless development to desktop developers for the first time on mobile devices, with support for Sun's Swing-based advanced graphics API.
(Nov 15, 2005)

Why use Java for Web 2.0?

Joshua talks about Java's advantages when designing Web 2.0 applications. — Joshua Marinacci
(2005-11-14T11:18-08:00)

A Must-Join Contest for Application Developers

Application developers, here's a wonderful opportunity to showcase your cool apps and win big. — Marina Sum
(2005-11-14T10:06-08:00)

Twinkle Teaser

I'm still working on it and I'm late but I have a cool teaser. — Romain Guy
(2005-11-10T17:09-08:00)

Announcing planetjdk.org

Many members of the JDK Community are active bloggers, but there hasn't been one place where you can go to find their blogs—until now. — Mark Reinhold
(2005-11-10T15:20-08:00)

Ribbon and drop-down galleries

This is a third installment in "ribbon" series (inspired by Office 12 command bar). Here I will talk about drop-down galleries in the ribbon. — Kirill Grouchnikov
(2005-11-10T13:11-08:00)

Mustang's HotSpot Client gets 58% faster!

Build 59 of Mustang just added a great improvement in the Client VM, for the benefit of all non-server-side Java applications out there. — Osvaldo Pinali Doederlein
(2005-11-10T09:13-08:00)

TabComponents in action

Mustang's tabComponent feature will be the most preferable and clear solution for customizing JTabbedPane. With it, you can add a close button, use a radio button in the tab, and more. — Alexander Potochkin
(2005-11-09T10:51-08:00)

A Brief Report from JavaOne Japan

This blog is a first for me: it's brief. Yesterday Scott Violet, Josh Marianacci and I made some presentations at JavaOne Japan, and we promised to provide a few helpful URLs. I've put together a couple that cover the Extreme GUI talks with a short tangent about the perils of translation. — Hans Muller
(2005-11-09T07:32-08:00)

WeakReferences and Actions

In my last blog I delved into why one might use Actions. In this article I'm going to cover how Swing's component support Actions. Eventually I'll wind up in why you should know about WeakReferences. — Scott Violet
(2005-11-09T01:25-08:00)

Twinkle, a Java2D/OpenGL Demo

I have spent the past few days playing with JOGL and the new OpenGL pipeline in Mustang. Here is a sneak preview of a soon to be released demo. — Romain Guy
(2005-11-09T01:24-08:00)

JavaOne Tokyo, Day One

A brief report on what I saw in Tokyo on the first day. [Editor's note: Includes a summary of a desktop session, "Extreme GUI Makeover, Episode 1: Lookin' Good," and a pointer to javadesktop.org for info on "cool Swing stuff."] — Gregg Sporar
(2005-11-08T05:52-08:00)

Customize Your JList Display
Swing JList components don't always display the text you'd like for a specific object list...at least not by default. — John O'Conner

Preparing for Tokyo

I'm spending today packing for my exciting trip to Japan this week. Yes, I managed to wrangle a trip to JavaOne Tokyo, where I will be speaking on Java 2D performance, Swing layout, and helping out with the Peabody booth. — Joshua Marinacci
(2005-11-05T15:03-08:00)

JavaOne 2006: Ideas for Desktop Talks?

It's time once again to submit a killer session for JavaOne, or to submit some ideas for killer sessions you'd like to see. — Chet Haase
(2005-11-01T14:07-08:00)

The Usefulness of Actions

This blog gives an overview of Actions, why you might use them, and covers a bit of the changes to Actions in 1.6. — Scott Violet
(2005-11-01T07:58-08:00)

'Close' icons on a JTabbedPane w/o UI interference

Many apps require a 'close' icon on a tab of a JTabbedPane. Most solutions require manipulation of the L&F; classes. There is another option that works without interference with the UI using proactive icons. — Joerg Plewe
(2005-10-29T04:18-08:00)

Catalogs of Web Startable Apps

We've recently found a couple of catalogs with links to JNLP files — just click the link, and the app is installed and launched by Java Web Start software. The first catalog is Juanjo Navarro's Java Application Launcher (también en español), which lists just a few, well-chosen apps in the categories of productivity, multimedia, development, education, and games. A more comprehensive (and amazingly long) catalog is currently called 2737 JNLP applications. (Wow. That's a lot of apps.) Then, of course, there are the Swing Sightings, which aren't restricted to Web Started apps, but which have big blue buttons that let you easily find and launch those apps that have JNLP files.
(Oct 28, 2005)

tools for java.net project owners

Those of us who run projects on java.net knows how painful the java.net web interface can be sometimes. Simple things like adding a person to your project take multiple mouse clicks, and when pages load slowly (like just now!), it can quickly kill your productivity. Today, I'm going to talk about the java.net tools that solve this problem. — Kohsuke Kawaguchi
(2005-10-26T21:53-08:00)

Spicing up your JTabbedPane

This entry shows how to add close buttons to your tabs (in Java 5.0) and how to indicate that contents of a tab have changed. — Kirill Grouchnikov
(2005-10-27T02:20-08:00)

Swing Sightings Preview: MagicDraw UML

Back in early August we published a preview about version 9 of the MagicDraw UML editor. Now version 10.0 has been released, and it's certainly nice to see a Swing app whose version has reached double digits! According to No Magic, Inc., the company that makes this visual UML modeling and CASE tool, MagicDraw UML 10.0 is the first tool on the market to support the latest public UML 2.0 Superstructure specification from the Object Management Group (OMG). It also supports the UML 2.0 notation standard, and now adds UML 2.0 metamodel support, including the newest revisions introduced by OMG in October 2004. You can find out all about the new features from the MagicDraw website. Also check out the new screenshots.
(Oct 26, 2005)

Featured Project: iTunes Library Checker (ituneschecker)

The ituneschecker project, newly graduated from the JavaDesktop incubator, features an app that can perform a variety of consistency checks on an iTunes music library. For example, it can check that all tracks in the library exist on disk, and vice versa. It can also check whether every track appears in at least one playlist other than the master playlist. The program is fully operational and has a user guide. Plans for future work are in the source download's ToDo file.
(Oct 25, 2005)