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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Features

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...

 —  Fabrizio Giudici
  (Sep 16, 2007)

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)

Romain Guy: First review for Filthy Rich Clients

If you're still not sure whether you should buy a copy of Filthy Rich Clients, take a look at our first review by Gregg Bolinger. Thanks Gregg! (Sep 05, 2007)

Sergey Groznyh: Generating Print Preview of Swing Text Components

How to create print preview of Swing Text components: what are the necessary parts involved and how do they cooperate. —  Sergey Groznyh
  (Sep 05, 2007)

Romain Guy: TimingFramework 1.0

Chet just announced the release of TimingFramework 1.0. (Sep 04, 2007)

Chet Haase: Aversion 1.0: It's About Time

Version 1.0 of the Timing Framework is [finally] available. About time, eh? (Sep 04, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Key Largo, Edelweiss and Caireann are finally released

I'm very pleased to announce releases for the main three projects that I'm working on:

Release 4.0 of Substance look-and-feel (code-named Key Largo)

Release 3.1 of Laf-Widget layer for LAFs (code-named Edelweiss)

Release 2.0 of Flamingo component suite (code-named Caireann)

(Sep 04, 2007)

Romain Guy: Free Sample Chapter for Filthy Rich Clients

InformIT is hosting a free sample chapter of Filthy Rich Clients, the book Chet Haase and I recently published. InformIT offers the full chapter 8 about image processing with Java 2D. Chapter 8 belongs to Part I of the book, graphics fundamentals. Refer to filthyrichclients.org to download the source code of the examples. (Aug 27, 2007)

Java Posse #139 - Newscast for August 23rd 2007

Newscast for August 23rd 2007 Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com More details on the Java Posse (Hello) World Tour http://www4.java.no/web/show.do? page=152&articleid;=5053 NetBeans 6.0 is to be released under the GP (Aug 24, 2007)

Chet Haase: Another Chetcast

Daniel Steinberg interviewed me at OSCON for a JavaWorld podcast. Check it out to hear more about Swing, 2D, and Java Desktop in general. (Aug 22, 2007)

John O'Conner: Learning Curve Series for JavaFX Script

I'm an early adopter of JavaFX Script, and I'm experimenting with the language. Since I've never been too afraid to let you sit next to me as I explore new things, I've decided to share my experience learning JavaFX Script too. —  John O'Conner
  (Aug 21, 2007)

Swing Sighting: Fusion Laboratory

The Fusion Framework enables Swing components to be extended with 3D content via JOGL. In general the 3D content will show up in layers on top of the corresponding Swing component. Many utility functions are integrated to help the developer build components. For example, the 3D content may be calibrated to the corresponding component's bounds. In addition, the system provides a simple scenegraph, Swing-like mouse interaction, and low-level animation support, as well as GLSL shaders and .obj file loading.

The demo page contains several Java Web Start applications which demonstrate the abilities of the framework; the Fusion engineers would especially appreciate if people could fill out the web form to help evaluate the components' usefulness.

(Aug 23, 2007)

Chet Haase: Code Complete Nonsense: More Language Proposals

I'm not a language guy, but I know what I like. Here are some more language features for Java for extremely serious consideration. (Aug 23, 2007)

Praveen Mohan: FX animations contd - A rudimentary screensaver

I was little off the hook with FX for a week now since Consumer JRE has taken up most of my time. As stated in Chet's blog, there is so much of cool stuff lined up for the Java community through consumer JRE and catch a glimpse of it when you get time. (Aug 23, 2007)

Dieter Krachtus: EOS - Eclipse on Swing - Major Release

There has been a lot of confusion lately if there will be SWT support and thus Eclipse running on OSX 10.5 a.k.a Leopard. Fear not - get EOS

I just released a major new version of the EOS plugin (Eclipse on Swing plug-in) -- download it from the EOS website. (Aug 22, 2007)

Alexander Schunk: Java Consumer JRE: really a winner

This morning i was wondering about the Java Kernel project and why nobody - outside SUN - noticed it. Today i found an answer in Chets Blog who describes the features of a new Java Consumer JRE including Java kernel, a new Nimbus look and feel, a new Graphics pipeline under Windows and some other improvements. —  Alexander Schunk
  (Aug 22, 2007)

Charles Ditzel: New Tutorials : Identity Manager, JavaFX Script

There is a new Sun Java System Identity Manager tutorial available and also two new JavaFX Script tutorials. More.... (Aug 20, 2007)

Romain Guy: 82 Swing and Java 2D Demos

Filthy Rich Clients is available and several people have already received their copy. To make sure you can follow all of our examples easily, Chet and I have just released the demos of the final chapters: Static Effects, Dynamic Effects and Animated Transitions. These demos are our favorites so make sure to check them out! (Aug 20, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Release candidate for Substance 4.0

The release candidate for version 4.0 of Substance look-and-feel (code-named Key Largo) is available. The list of new features includes: Six new skins: Nebula, Nebula Brick Wall, Autumn, Magma, Mist Silver and Mist Aqua. State-aware theme transitions Smart tree scroll Glowing icons (buttons, option pane) Support for JXPanel translucency SwingX UI delegates in SwingX plugin Border painters New title painters: Brushed Metal, Marble [...] (Aug 20, 2007)

Cay Horstmann: Flying Saucer Comes Through with Flying Colors, or the Triumph of Infrastructure

I had to render a set of presentation slides in HTML Slidy format into images. This blog entry shows how to carry out this task with the excellent Flying Saucer XHTML renderer and concludes with some ramblings about infrastructure. —  Cay Horstmann
  (Aug 18, 2007)

Java Posse #138 - Newscast for August 16th and Glassfish Interview

Newscast for August 16th 2007 and Glassfish Interview Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com SCO end game unrollinghttp://slashdot.org/articles/07/08/ 13/208231.shtml http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl? sid=07/08/10/21482 (Aug 18, 2007)

Joshua Marinacci: NetBeans to become GPL!

I have been in the open source world for a long time. Pretty much since I first installed Slackware in my sophomore year of college (I'll leave calculating that year and my age as an exercise to the reader). I... —  Joshua Marinacci
  (Aug 17, 2007)

Ariel Meilij: A new perspective for SWING under NetBeans 6.0 M10

I downloaded the new development version of NetBeans 6.0 (actually in M10) just for the kicks. I wanted to see if the new Ruby on Rails editing was any good, and I was recently surprised so. But not so much for the excellent Rails support, but rather for the new SWING look... (Aug 14, 2007)

Praveen Mohan: FX animations - Capture the falling objects

As a continuation of my learning process, I wanted to find out What would it take to write a blocks game in FX... (Aug 13, 2007)

John O'Conner: Learning the JavaFX way of doing things

I discovered that although using JavaFX Script's declarative syntax to define the visual UI is easy, I was being simple-minded to think I'd be able to just return that whole UI structure to Java. —  John O'Conner
  (Aug 10, 2007)

Java Posse #137 - Newscast for August 9th 2007

Newscast for August 9th 2007 Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com Iris is ready for the prime time (or at least general experimentation) https://iris.dev.java.net/ Hackademix.net has a description of a way to use Java and (Aug 10, 2007)

David Herron: Java-in-browser availability

One of the questions/concerns about Java is, can a web site author assume that it's there? Part of the popularity of Flash or Javascript is it's in all browsers, but the belief is that Java probably is not installed. I... —  David Herron
  (Aug 09, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Filthy Rich Clients - interview with Chet Haase

The previous entry featured an interview with Romain Guy, the co-author of the “Filthy Rich Clients” book. Today it’s time for Chet Haase, the second author behind this book. Why have you decided to write this book? I’ve wanted to write a book for some time - something in the general area of Java and graphics. [...] (Aug 09, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Filthy Rich Clients - interview with Romain Guy

With the “Filthy Rich Clients” book just around the corner, the co-author Romain Guy was gracious enough to answer a few questions that i had about the book and the related topics. Whose idea was it to write the book? Chet came up with the idea. Chet loves to write and his wordy, yet, rare, blog entries [...] (Aug 08, 2007)

Terrence Barr: Java on the iPod ... Whoa!

One of our newest community members, Stefan Saftescu, posted this question on our phoneME forum. Java on the iPod and a dozen other multimedia players? Way cool! That's the thing about open source: Innovation and ideas come from all sorts... —  Terrence Barr
  (Aug 08, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Swing painting pipeline - the conclusion

Over the past two weeks i have presented a few solutions to paint validation overlays in Swing. The sheer variety of the solution spectrum serves to highlight the extensibility of the Swing painting pipeline. As can be seen from even such a simple example as validation overlays, there are many ways to achieve the desired functionality [...] (Aug 07, 2007)

Chet Haase: Done? Done. It's Here

The advance copies of Filthy Rich Clients have arrived; a comparative analysis is in order. (Aug 07, 2007)

Romain Guy: The Book is Here!

I just received my copy of Filthy Rich Clients, the book I wrote with Chet Haase. You will probably be happy to know that you will soon stop hearing about it on this blog :) (Aug 06, 2007)

Java Posse #136 - Newscast for August 4th 2007

Newscast for August 4th 2007 Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com How much is your code worth? http://cysquatch.net/blog/?p=43 http://www.theserverside.com/news/ thread.tss?thread_id=46356 http://www.yafla.com/dennisforbe (Aug 05, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Glass panes and lightweight popup menus

Matt Nathan has asked an excellent question in the comments section of the “Validation overlays using glass pane” entry - what happens when you have your validation field under a lightweight menu?Let’s see what happens when we click on the button of the first combobox: As you can see, the validation overlays painted by the glass [...] (Aug 03, 2007)

Swing Sighting: Palantir

Palantir is building an enterprise platform for analysis of financial and intelligence data. Analysts at government agencies across investigative and intelligence realms are experiencing tremendous analytical challenges managing the tidal wave of information that flows across their desks and throughout their knowledge networks. Palantir Government provides a new way of exploring, understanding, and sharing these large sets of structured and unstructured information across departmental and organizational lines. Similarly, Palantir Financial is a powerful new analytical platform for approaching and understanding financial markets. For decades, traders and economists have struggled with conventional financial and statistical software to explore the financial world. With Palantir, analysts directly explore and manipulate dynamic financial concepts. Properties and connections amongst a vast array of time series, time periods, macroeconomic trends and events, and exotic hedge fund strategies can be discovered, published and shared, unlocking organizational knowledge.

Screenshots: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

(Aug 01, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Validation overlays using AOP

As i mentioned in the previous entry, one of the disadvantages of overriding the paint() method for validation overlays is that you need to do it for each one of the components that can have validation errors. So, you no longer use a “pure” JTextField, for example. You either override the paint() method when you create your text field, or use a custom class that extends JTextField and overrides the paint() method. Needless to say that the impact on your UI creation code is rather large and unpleasant. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just inject the required functionality to all Swing components? (Aug 01, 2007)

Romain Guy: Blurred Background for Dialogs (Extreme GUI Makeover 2007)

Shannon, Chris and I showed many cool effects during this year's Extreme GUI Makeover session, at JavaOne 2007. Since we cannot release the source code yet, I will explain some of the effects in detail. I will start with the blurred background displayed when a modal dialog shows up...

(Aug 01, 2007)

Chet Haase: Of Interviews, Java, JavaFX, and Other Filthy Things

There are a couple of video interviews posted with me talking to other Sun people about Java, JavaFX, and Filthy Rich Clients. And there are more Filthy Rich demos available. (Jul 31, 2007)

Romain Guy: Demos of the Week - All About Animations

This week, Chet and I released the source code, demos and examples for chapters 12 and 13 of our upcoming book, Filthy Rich Clients. These chapters explain how to create simple animation with Java SE's APIs and how to avoid some common rendering artifacts. (Jul 31, 2007)

Swing Sighting: PatientOS

PatientOS is a free clinical information management system designed for hospitals and healthcare practitioners. The software is for physicians, nursing, pharmacy, the laboratory and eventually all hospital departments. An extensive software architecture has been designed to create the highest quality system

The client is pure Swing with RMI, JBoss, Hibernate, and database independent (PostgreSQL or Oracle I will support). All UI configuration is stored in the database.

Screenshots: 1 2 3 4 5

(Jul 30, 2007)

Vodcast: Filthy Rich Clients: An Inteview With Chet Haase

Java.sun.com writer Ed Ort interviews Sun client architect Chet Haase about what's new and cool for developing compelling desktop applications. (Jul 30, 2007)

Elie Levy: Java Dock with a better bouncing effect

In my last blog I explained how I built a Dock bar using the Timing Framework and the Glass pane. This one is a continuation, where I explain briefly a slight improvement on the bouncing effect.

Chet Haase: Swing Frameworks: Catch the Wave

"Open Source Convention". Isn't that a bit like "Anarchy Government"? Or "Military Intelligence"? Or "Personable Programmer"? (Jul 27, 2007)

Postcast: Java Posse #135 - Newscast for July 26th 2007

Newscast for July 26th 2007 Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com. (Jul 26, 2007)

Chet Haase: FXtive Programming

The JavaFX Script team has released important some new pieces recently in this in-development project. (Jul 26, 2007)

Evan Summers: Gooey Goals

I gave a talk at Cape Town JUG last night, and in order to punt my upcoming pet project "Gooey" framework, i had to actually think and decide about what it is and what are it's goals and features because I had no idea ;) —  Evan Summers
  (Jul 26, 2007)

Improving Groovy's Console GUI

Groovy is a very appealing language that I really enjoy using from time to time. Unfortunately, as many other languages, Groovy lacks decent development environments. Even though this shortcoming is being addressed by the Eclipse and IntelliJ, the Groovy Console remains a valuable tool to quickly test an expression or a script... (Jul 26, 2007)

Elie Levy: Java Dock (Launch Bar)

With the timing framework and the glass panel, you can create almost any UI component. Offering cool and complex behaviors. In this blog I present a version of a launch bar (Dock). —  Elie Levy
  (Jul 25, 2007)

Applet of the Day: FnCharts

Feature-rich interactive financial charts for the web with advanced technical analysis and real-time capabilities.

New features in version 6.0 include:

• Export as PNG feature (with custom footer text) that allows users to publish their studies, e-mail charts to friends or share their technical analysis with other traders. This gives you a great opportunity to build active user communities around your website or services.
• New advanced technical indicators: Pivot Points and DMA (Displaced Moving Average)
• and more exciting features

There are two free versions available for download.

(Jul 23, 2007)

Romain Guy: Repaint Manager Demos (Chapter 11)

The source code, demos and examples for the chapter 11 of Filthy Rich Clients are available online. This chapter presents the repaint manager. Chapter 11 presents two demos, TranslucentPanel and ReflectionPanel The first one is an exercise for the reader showing why and when the user of a RepaintManager is necessary... (Jul 23, 2007)

Joshua Marinacci: Java FX updated, and a visit to the future of client Java

Open JFX updated OpenJFX, the open source version of Java FX, was just updated. It has lots of improvements and demos, but the biggest thing is the first compiler, which will compile Java FX Script directly into bytecode rather than interpreting... —  Joshua Marinacci
  (Jul 20, 2007)

John O'Conner: Using JavaFX Script for UI Declarations

My skills aren't UI design, and I don't really want to create new, fascinating UIs either. However, I do want to know how a Java programmer and a UI designer would work together -- one using Java for the business logic, event handlers, and models, and the other using JavaFX Script. —  John O'Conner
  (Jul 21, 2007)

Charles Ditzel: JavaFX Script : Major Update, Compiler Incubator Project and more

A new and major release of JavaFX Script happened. Lots of new items released including new plugins, an incubator compiler project, new demos and more... (Jul 22, 2007)

Geertjan Wielenga: Testing Tools for Rich Client Applications

There are surprisingly many ways of testing applications built on the NetBeans Platform. Or any other kind of Java application in NetBeans IDE. In this regard, the URL that you should paint on your bedroom ceiling is this one:

http://testtools.netbeans.org/ (Jul 20, 2007)

Tom Ball: The Birth of the JavaFX Script Compiler

An incubator project to build a compiler for the JavaFX Script language has been started. Not much there yet, but developers have a chance to get in on the bottom floor and help make it a killer tool. (Jul 20, 2007)

Amy Fowler: Embedding Swing components in a JEditorPane

I was talking to a developer at JavaOne who didn't realize you can use the tag to embed Swing components inside HTML within a JEditorPane. This turns out to be easy, modulo a small hook in the javax.swing.text package. Here I explain in reasonably short form how to do this. —  Amy Fowler
  (Jul 19, 2007)

Evan Summers: Half Baked Beans

I decided how i'm gonna do properies for my own gooey purposes. I like! —  Evan Summers
  (Jul 20, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Flurry of activity

A lits of the things that i've done for the past few weeks, including links to some interesting articles on Swing, SwingX and Substance. —  Kirill Grouchnikov
  (Jul 19, 2007)

Introducing Planet RIA

Canoo has set up a blog aggregator to help keep up with news and developments on Rich Internet Applications (RIA):

http://www.planet-ria.org

The feed aggregator is based on work by Glen Smith at http://groovyblogs.org and collects news about RIA technologies. It is a beta version. (Jul 19, 2007)

Romain Guy: Demos for Layered Panes

The source code, demos and examples for the chapter 10 of Filthy Rich Clients are available online. This chapter presents layered panes. The next batch of demos, focusing on Repaint Manager, will contain my favorite demo, a real-time reflection applied on a QuickTime movie. (Jul 18, 2007)

Evan Summers: My usual blah blah blah

In response to a blog that "the desktop is becoming obsolete" and will become obsolete, because of Web2.0, i rehashed all my usual blah blah blah - which i'm getting tired of spouting like a broken record, but i just can't help it! (Jul 18, 2007)

Evan Summers: My checklist for the next year

Things i must do, things i wanna write... (Jul 14, 2007)

Joe Winchester: Desktop Java Slims Down to Enter the AJAX Race

A number of very significant development efforts are underway that bode well for Desktop Java's future... (Jul 17, 2007)

Reworking the Icon Demo

During the JavaSE 6 update to the Swing Tutorial, a decision was taken to convert a number of the old applets to stand-alone applications. We also converted the majority of them to NetBeans projects. I got to convert the IconDemoApplet... (Jul 16, 2007)

Teppefall Labs: Vista compability

Those of you who get the "msvcr71.dll missing" error message should copy msvcr71.dll from the Java VM bin/ directory into the base directory of your Teppefall application. If you get a "Registry Not Found" error you need to install Java.... (Jul 16, 2007)

Chris Oliver: First steps with the JavaFX Compiler

Thanks to the efforts of Robert Field, Lubo Litchev, and Jonathan Gibbons of the Javac team, as well as Per Bothner and Brian Goetz (and also thanks to the organizational efforts of Bob Brewin, James Gosling, and Tom Ball) we have the beginnings of a JavaFX to JVM-byte-code compiler built on the same infrastructure as Javac... (Jul 14, 2007)

Joshua Marinacci: Flying Saucer R7 is out

The Flying Saucer team is proud to announce that we have just released version R7 Final. Flying Saucer is an open source XHTML renderer I started a few years ago here on Java.net. It can render any XHTML + CSS... (Jul 14, 2007)

Dieter Krachtus: SWT running on OS/2 - thanks to Swing!

Forgive the short and misleading title - SWT's recent reincarnation in Swing called SWTSwing makes it happen. Yesterday I was contacted by Jürgen Ulbts and asked if SWTSwing/EOS could run under OS/2?

What's SWTSwing/EOS - we summed it up in this article:
English:  Flexibility at the Roots of Eclipse (pdf)
German: SWTSwing and Eclipse on Swing (html)


With a little help from my side we finally got it running on OS/2 eComStation 2.0 rc1.

   

The screenshots show the application running on Java 1.4.1 (Golden Code - native) and Java 1.4.2 (Innotek - orig. Sun Java). What should you care? Recently, Chris Deckers and I discussed that a real killerapplication for SWTSwing/EOS on systems who suddenly don't support SWT at all or perhaps stop supporting it. I think we are still unclear with the next 64bit OSX and if there will ever be a Cocoa-SWT (anyone knows more?).

Anyway - with SWTSwing/EOS you have much higher security and trust that your appliaction will run in the future (as we predicted in the article above). It only needs a recent version of Java/Swing.

(Jul 13, 2007)

Romain Guy: More Photos from JavaOne 2007

From top to bottom: Thorsten Laux from Sun Microsystems, Joe Nuxoll from Apple/the Java Posse, Jay Zimmerman from No Fluff Just Stuff and a random dude. (Jul 13, 2007)

Chet Haase: Sent to Print!

The book's been sent to the printers, so we're actually, finally done. We hope. (Jul 13, 2007)

Java Posse #133 - Newscast for July 12th 2007

Newscast for July 12th 2007 Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com Java EE 6 is back, but not as JSR 313, instead it will be JSR 316 http://weblogs.java.net/blog/editors/ archives/2007/07/live_and_let_di.html http://jcp.org (Jul 13, 2007)

John O'Conner: Unicode support in JavaFX Script

I was pleasantly surprised with my first real interaction with JavaFX Script. Of course, I had to test at least one of its i18n features, so I picked something simple, Unicode text in the script. My goal was simple. Find... (Jul 13, 2007)

JFXBuilder: Shape Morphing in JavaFX/JFXBuilder

One of the most interesting additions to the last version of JavaFX was the new Morph Shape. In the last week we decided to see if we could come up with a quick way to integrate this functionality into JFXBuilder. The solution we came up with is similar to our SwichShape (introduced in our [ MouseOver Animation ] blog a few weeks ago). For Morph shape we added a new menu item called "Group in Morph Shape". Simply draw a few shapes, select them (in the order you want the morph to follow) and choose the menu item (right click to get there quickly).

(Jul 12, 2007)

Slashdot Book Review: Computer Graphics With Java

Computer graphics has become an indispensable part of mainstream computing and the undergraduate course in computer graphics programming is often one of the most popular courses in the curriculum. In the early days, such courses dealt with low level implementation details and algorithms such as converting lines to pixels, filling rectangles, view clipping and anti-aliasing. When OpenGL arrived on the scene, it was welcomed as an efficient and powerful, procedure-oriented library that kept many of the low level details out of sight. The sort of projects that could be tackled in an introductory course became much more impressive. That was back in the 90's. Is there a way to build a course covering the basic computer graphics concepts and techniques which takes advantage of object orientation and higher levels of abstraction? I believe the authors of Computer Graphics using Java have found a way. (Jul 12, 2007)

Romain Guy: Photos of Guillaume Lagorge and Chet Haase

The first two pictures below show Guillaume Laforge, Groovy's project manager, speaking at G2One, the Groovy event that took place during Community One for JavaOne 2007 (gotta love those ones.) The third picture show Chet, the funny guy with whom I co-authored Filthy Rich Clients. More pictures from JavaOne 2007 to come. (Jul 12, 2007)

Romain Guy: Demos for Chapter 8 and 9 available

The source code, demos and examples for the chapters 8 and 9 of Filthy Rich Clients are available online. These chapter present image processing and glass panes. (Jul 11, 2007)

Java Posse #132 - Interview with Bill Pugh and Brian Goetz

Interview with Bill Pugh and Brian Goetz (Jul 11, 2007)

Fabrizio Giudici: Java and Mac OS X - again...

In the past months, there have been several blog posts about the status of Java 6 on Mac OS X, mainly dealing with the complete lack of information about Apple's plans.The worse scenarios have been fortunately dissipated when Apple published... —  Fabrizio Giudici
  (Jul 10, 2007)

Chris Oliver: Bidirectional binding

In addition, to corrections to local variable binding the next update of the JavaFX interpreter will include extended bidirectional binding, including of logical negation, unary minus, arithmetic, and sequence indexing. Here's a JavaFXPad example you can try out:

(Jul 10, 2007)

Scott Hommel: Custom Painting - Is This Fast Enough?

The following program is from the latest version of the "Custom Painting in Swing" lesson in The Java Tutorial, which will be released sometime near the end of the month. (Jul 10, 2007)

John O'Conner: Could you cut your development time in half?

Application frameworks are supposed to save you time and effort. That's probably true for most frameworks after you slog through the complex APIs, tutorials, docs, forums, a few just-in-time courses, and maybe even a couple nightmarish starts and stops... —  John O'Conner
  (Jul 10, 2007)

Chet Haase: Train Req - Want to Intern at Sun?

Definition: "train req": An opening for a position that provides on-the-job training. And a darn good pun. (Jul 09, 2007)

Charles Ditzel: Presentations from Sun Tech Days Available (PDF)

PDF Presentations from Sun Tech Days are available. More... (Jul 09, 2007)

Dieter Krachtus: Java Media II - an even better approach

To make it short - last time I suggested NestedVM to get a Java implementation of the Ogg Vorbis audio codec and the Theora video codec. However, this doesn't render NestedVM useless for Java Media.

No doing some intensive reseach on the web I finally discovered that there is already a free solution from Flumotionimplementing these codecs called Cortado. Even more they offer a complete streaming solution.

Check out the Cortado Demo site - you won't regret it.


(Jul 09, 2007)

Teppefall Labs: New updates

Colorspace 1.3, Fabric 2.8 and Surface 2.8 is available in the data folder. I will update the download page tomorrow. Colorspace now supports the taskbar, Fabric is less retarded and Surface has a new loader icon + hex color to... (Jul 08, 2007)

Jasper Potts: SVG Shape 2 Java2D Code

A couple weeks ago I needed to write some Java2D code to draw a water droplet. If you have ever tried coding bezier paths off the top of you head it is not the simplest of things and can be frustrating. So I ended up drawing it in Illustrator and saving as SVG. The next [...] (Jul 08, 2007)

Evan Summers: A Short Note About Properties And Politics

Another reason why we need properties in the language.. (Jul 07, 2007)

Java Posse #131 - Walking Around JavaOne 2007 - Part 2

Walking Around JavaOne 2007 - Part 2 Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com This episode is part two of our recordings from walking around JavaOne and talking to people we meet. Joe does most of the work in this episode. Jo (Jul 04, 2007)

Charles Ditzel: Bits : World Wind Apps, Java SE 6 Update 2

A few miscellaneous bits - a good article on creating World Wind applications and note that updte 2 of Java SE 6 is available. More... (Jul 04, 2007)

Dieter Krachtus: Java Media - Theora Video Codec

It seems NestedVM excited a lot of people and already spawned a posting at javalobby. Yesterday I talked about the Xiph audio encoder/decoder - both are pretty slow when converted to Java bytecode. A better example when it comes to performance is the Theora video codec.

Download Java version of Theora.

According to Maik "it seems that currently the Theora decoder is about 6-7 times slower in NestedVM when compared to the native x86 version (which also includes some MMX assembly). Personally I think this is a nice result for a start, albeit it means that currently it can not decode content above 352x288 with full framerate (25 to 30 fps) on my system. This is already useable in low-bandwidth scenarios."

Obviously you can tune the GCC makefile and squeeze out more performance. From my experience using all kinds of optimizations one can get a solution that runs slower by a factor of 5 compared to the native thing.
(Jul 03, 2007)

Java Tech Tips: Drag and Drop

Over the ages, drag and drop with the Swing component set has changed considerably. Early versions had a basic API in the java.awt.dnd package (with support from java.awt.datatransfer), but you had to define all aspects of the drag gesture, from the initial user clicking to the drop operation. J2SE 1.4 updates to the API improved upon the feature set and was described in an earlier tip: Dragging Text and Images with Swing... (Jun 29, 2007)

Naoto Sato: Currency enhancements in JDK7

In the JDK, applications can use java.util.Currency class to deal with currencies. They can query what currency is used in a given country, or what localized symbol is used for that currency in a particular locale. To provide applications with those currency information, the JDK contains the currency data that is based on the ISO 4217 standard. From time to time, due to a ...

(Jun 28, 2007)

JavaFX Script Productivity Part I of II: Learning

The team of guys that worked on the "Music Pinboard" application are all seasoned Java/Swing/2D (and ULC) experts. So although it’s been a while, we do recall that it took us a little while to really learn these APIs in depth, not to mention the various subtleties behind them. We have also coached relative beginners in Java and have, not surprisingly, witnessed the process taking even longer. So an important question for us to consider was: Is learning Java FX script (JFX) significantly easier than learning Swing?

(Jun 28, 2007)

Chet Haase: The Book: Making Progress

Website posted, demos being uploaded weekly, editing nearly done - what more do you want? Oh - the book.... (Jun 28, 2007)

Stanley Ho: OpenJDK Modules project: Early snapshot, video, and more

We have just made an early snapshot of the JSR 277 and JSR 294 implementation available through the Modules project on openjdk. —  Stanley Ho
  (Jun 28, 2007)

Teppefall Labs: Titanium Look And Feel

Titanium is is an extended version (as in "extends") of the Substance LAF. All visuals except the LAF aware Titanium icon logic is done using Substance API's. This is really a beta product, but I put it into production because... (Jun 28, 2007)

Charles Ditzel: Learning JavaFX : NetBeans 6 JavaFX Preview Mode

I started using JavaFX plugin on NetBeans 6.0 and it is better than the previous version. More... (Jun 27, 2007)

Java 3D 1.5.1 now available

Version 1.5.1 of the Java 3D API is now available for download.

Highlights of this release include:

• Windows Vista Support
• Automatic fallback to D3D pipeline if OpenGL unavailable
• JOALMixer-based audio engine
• Automatic mipmap generation
• Pack200 support for Java Web Start applications
• Logging framework
• Support for new JNLPAppletLauncher utility (based on JOGLAppletLauncher)
• Several bug fixes

See the release notes for more information.

(Jun 28, 2007)

JFXBuilder: Animation Interpolations

We've implemented a number of interesting interpolation functions in JavaFX this week using a simple Interpolator.fx class. An interpolator, which is used behind the scenes to calculate the changes between keyframes of an animation, can be set for any change using the Animation Inspector. (Jun 28, 2007)

Jasper Potts: SPAR Project Updated

I have updated the SPAR project that I released with the code from my JavaOne talk on “Why Spaghetti is not Tasty - Architecting Large Scale Applications”. I have fixed issues stopping it working on Java 6 and improved the ant build process to make it simpler to build and run the Demo Application. There [...] (Jun 26, 2007)

Scott Hommel: Eliminating Confusion

In my spare time I've been doing a remodeling project in the basement of my house. I'm not very experienced with power tools and such, so for my DIY projects, I rely on documentation and tutorials that I find online. Here is one such article, about replacing a standard light fixture with one that is flush-mount. Before reading this article, I had very little knowledge of how such a fixture was held in place. But after I read it, there is no way I could *not* understand it. Take a quick look at that article and you'll see what I mean... (Jun 26, 2007)

Alex Potochkin: Enabling/Disabling Swing Containers

The fact that disabling a Swing container doesn't mean disabling its child component has always been surprising for Swing beginners. Alexander shows the most proper solution for this problem.

(Jun 26, 2007)

Romain Guy: Demos for Chapters on Performance and Composites

The the source code for the demos of chapters 5 (Performance) and 6 (Composites) from our book are available. The source code of the demos are available in the CVS repository. (Jun 25, 2007)

A. Sundararajan: JavaScript, JSON and JavaFX Script

JavaFX Script, as you may know already, is a declarative and statically typed scripting language. It has first-class functions, declarative syntax, list-comprehensions, and incremental dependency-based evaluation.

(Jun 25, 2007)

Podcast: Java Posse #129 - Walking around JavaOne 2007, Part 1

Walking Around JavaOne 2007 - Part 1 Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com This episode is part one of our recordings from walking around JavaOne and talking to people we meet. Hopefully it gives a taste of what it is like (Jun 24, 2007)

Remi Forax: Beansbinding goes to the wrong direction

After reading the Shannon Hickey's Blog about the recent release of beanbinding 0.6, i've decided to take a look to beanbing and i think that the API doesn't guide the user enough. —  Rémi Forax
  (Jun 23, 2007)

Charles Ditzel: Learning JavaFX : Starting an IDE Project, Compiling and Building a Small Example

I have finished looking at JavaFXPad and now I'm using NetBeans. Here is a look at how to build a NetBeans project and app. More... (Jun 23, 2007)

JFX Builder: MouseOver Animations in JFXBuilder/JavaFX

This week we’ve been playing with a user friendly way to easily configure graphical and animated actions for common input events, like MouseOver and MousePressed. JFXBuilder already has a shape custom tailored for this called a “SwitchShape”. The basic idea is to select a group of shapes that we want to react to a mouse event, select the menu item “Group in SwitchShape”, then simply configure the look of the different “versions” (MouseOver, MousePressed, etc.).

(Jun 22, 2007)

Desktop development made easier with genesis

genesis 3 has just been released. This post explains what genesis is about and why you should consider it for your Swing, SWT or Thinlet application. (Jun 21, 2007)

Podcast: Java Posse #128 - Interview about Java User Groups and Community

Interview about Java User Groups and Community Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com Recorded at JavaOne 2007, this is an interview with Bruno Souza, Ean Schuessler, Daniel Brookshier, David Jones and of course, Juggy. (Jun 21, 2007)

Shannon Hickey: Beans Binding 0.6 Release Available

In this release:

• Improved JTable support
• More default converters
• Name your Bindings
• Compile-time type safety for setting Parameters
• A handful of method renames

(Jun 21, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Support for SwingX components - part II

This is the second part in the ongoing series of providing support for SwingX components in Substance look and feel. The first part showed the support for JXTaskPaneContainer and JXTaskPane, and this part will show the support for JXStatusBar. (Jun 21, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Support for SwingX components - part I

The first part in this series will showcase the support for JXTaskPaneContainer and JXTaskPane. The test application itself can be found in the CVS repository of Substance SwingX plugin, and here are a few screenshots of this application under different Substance skins. (Jun 20, 2007)

John O'Conner: Managing resources in the Swing Application Framework (JSR 296)

Instead of loading and working with ResourceBundle files directly, you will use the ResourceManager and ResourceMap framework classes to manage resources. A ResourceMap contains the resources defined in a specific ResourceBundle implementation. A map also contains links to its parent... —  John O'Conner
  (Jun 20, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Substance module will not be supported in NetBeans 6.0

Substance module for NetBeans will not be supported in NetBeans 6.0. —  Kirill Grouchnikov
  (Jun 20, 2007)

David Gilbert has released JFreeChart 1.0.6.

David Gilbert has released JFreeChart 1.0.6. This release adds vector plots, faster time series charts, mouse-click support for legends, and it fixes bugs. JFreeChart is free software under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public Licence (LGPL), and requires Java version 1.3.1 or later. (Jun 20, 2007)

Charles Ditzel: Learning JavaFX : Four Examples - Images & Mouse Events

This weekend I started spending some time with JavaFX. I decided to take notes and track my learning curve. Here are for beginner's examples on how to manipulate images and catch events. More... (Jun 19, 2007)

Romain Guy: Source Code and Demos for Chapter 4 (Images)

I just uploaded the source code for the demos of the fourth chapter of our book. The source code of the demos are available in the CVS repository. Chapter 4 focuses on images and contains explanations on how to resize images efficiently. (Jun 19, 2007)

Sergey Groznyh: Removing elements from Swing HTMLDocument

this entry explains how to remove elements from the Swing HTML document. —  Sergey Groznyh
  (Jun 18, 2007)

Elie Levy: Fancy JTable Animations, or should I say "Extreme"

If you went to the Extreme Makeovers JavaOne presentation, you probably enjoyed as much as I did the fancy table sorting animations that were presented. I got impatient waiting for them to release their code, and went to write my own. —  Elie Levy
  (Jun 15, 2007)

Joshua Marinacci: A Response to GUI Building: tool vs hand coded

The debate of hand coding your GUI screens versus using a tool has come up again. I suspect that Stuart wasn't expecting quite the volume response that he got. For some of you this is old hat and I suspect...

(Jun 14, 2007)