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

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 https://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 https://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)

ChetCast: Interview Posted

ITConversations has posted a podcast interview with me about all things Desktop. (Jun 13, 2007)

David Herron: Java on OS X, it's not dead...

In the I'm not dead yet category we have Java on Mac OS X Leopard to be 64-bit, resolution independent talking about Java sessions at WWDC. He says the WWDC program guide has statements about the Java that's to be... —  David Herron
  (Jun 13, 2007)

Stuart Clements: Layout Management: Use an IDE or Code by Hand?

Have you seen this cool video about the frustrations of coding a GridBag layout manager? We on the Swing tutorial team think this is a pretty accurate portrayal of how frustrating hand-coding a GUI can be, which is why in the latest update of the Swing trails we've decide to encourage the use of NetBeans as much as possible, especially where layout management is concerned. So, do you agree with this approach? Have you used NetBeans, or any other IDE, to create GUIs, and if so, what do you think? For any hand-coding purists out there, what arguments do you make for NOT using an IDE? Please let us know your thoughts! (Jun 13, 2007)

Podcast: Java Posse #126 - Simulcast with Coté from Drunk and Retired

This is an informal chat and analysis recorded at JavaOne with Michael Coté from the DrunkAndRetired.com podcast. (Jun 13, 2007)

Charles Ditzel: JavaFX Morph, NetBeans' Ruby Express and Groovy Macros on OpenOffice

A few bits this morning. First, Ruby developers are seriously hopping on board the NetBeans' Ruby Express train. Second, a few examples of JavaFX Morph and finally a way to write OpenOffice Macros in Groovy. (Jun 12, 2007)

Java 3D to be open sourced under GPL

Kevin Rushforth writes: "We are pleased to announce that the source code for the j3d-core and vecmath projects will be made available under the same open-source license that OpenJDK is now using: GPLv2 plus CLASSPATH exception. This gives software vendors more flexibility is releasing their products. You will be able to choose to use the existing binary SLA license, which will still be available for each fcs release, or you will be able to use the GPLv2 + CLASSPATH license to release your product with a pre-released (daily, alpha, beta) version of Java 3D, or with a version that you modify and build. This will also allow you greater ability to use code that you contribute to Java 3D without having to wait for one of our releases. Unlike the JRL, there is no restriction on its use for commercial purposes" [more]

(Jun 12, 2007)

Romain Guy: Demos for Chapter 3 Available

I just uploaded the source code for the demos of the third chapter of our book. The demos are currently available only on the CVS repository. We'll try to offer zip archives by the time the book is published. In the meantime, you'll have to deal with CVS, which will help you get new demos... (Jun 12, 2007)

John O'Conner: Swing Application Framework: Lifecycle Events

Every application has a lifecycle of events determined by the framework. Override those event methods to define application behavior. —  John O'Conner
  (Jun 12, 2007)

Cay Horstmann: The Single Thread Rule in Swing

I am working on the 8th edition of Core Java, and one of my thoughtful reviewers (Brian Goetz) pointed out that the single threading rule for Swing has been tightened up recently. This blog discusses how code that used to be good is now bad, and it tries to elicit some answers from the experts about that badness. —  Cay Horstmann
  (Jun 12, 2007)

Simon Morris: A Rose By Any Other Name

What's in a name? The term 'Rich Internet Application' is rapidly becoming as meaningless as '.NET' (or indeed 'Java'). In this semi-serious (and occasionally even lucid) blog entry I want to break down the possible meanings to their underlying religions... and then have a jolly good rant. —  Simon Morris
  (Jun 12, 2007)

Java Posse #125 - Newscast for June 7th 2007

• Redhat forking Java? It's a good thing really
• Eclipse 3.3 RC3 (release candidate 3) has been released
• JSF - why hasn't it taken over the world
• Microsoft is just too busy to back up their threats
• More details on a new, small, consumer JRE to compete with Flash
• Google released Google Gears
• Mobile java app of the week - webaroo
• ... and lots more!

(Jun 11, 2007)

Michael Urban: NetBeans 6 Rocks!

After working with NetBeans 6 over the last week, I have to say I am very impressed. This is not simply a minor upgrade, as is so common in IDEs these days even when they are given a new major version number. Quite the contrary, NetBeans 6 is a major new release, and a major improvement over NetBeans 5.5. (Jun 11, 2007)

Podcast: Bunny Hunters & Project Darkstar

In this JavaOne 2007 Community Corner mini-talk, Project Darkstar founder and community leader Jeff Kesselman introduces Bunny Hunters, a demo game written to run on Darkstar. In his talk, he discusses the unique challenges of multiplayer online games, and how to implement the timing, turn-taking, and game-handling logic of an online game with the facilities provided by Darkstar. (Jun 11, 2007)

Scott Hommel: Chat, Anyone?

One of our readers posted a suggestion about including a chat applet (or something similar) into the pages of the The Java Tutorial. We are considering this possibility but would like to know what everyone else thinks. If we enable a live chat, would you use it? (Jun 11, 2007)

Charles Ditzel: OpenJFX Project - Most Popular Project on java.net

The OpenJFX project is taking top honors on java.net - it has become the most visited site in the community. More... (Jun 10, 2007)

Romain Guy: Demos for Filthy Rich Clients (Book + Talk)

Chet and I just started uploading the source code of the demos shown in our book. The source code is available at filthyrichclients.dev.java.net. We will release the source code incrementally until the printed version of the book comes out early August. Right now, you can download the demos of Chapter 2, Swing Rendering Fundamentals... (Jun 08, 2007)

Trolltech Releases Qt Jambi Toolkit for Java

Trolltech has announced the release of their Qt Jambi toolkit for Java, giving a nod of confidence to the future of Java on the desktop. Like the C++ version of Qt, Qt Jambi aims to make developing cross platform desktop applications that look and feel native, very easy and powerful. Qt Jambi makes it easy for Java developers who wish to port Swing applications by allowing you combine Swing top-level windows and Qt Jambi top-level windows. In addition, the Qt Jambi team is looking into the possibility of being able to combine on a widget basis, so that Swing widgets could be children of Qt Jambi widgets, and vice versa.

(Jun 08, 2007)

Andres Almiray: Testing Groovy UIs with FEST

Another announcement of the week is the release of FEST 0.3, a great milestone for Yvonne & Alex. I've exchanged information with them about adding Groovy support to FEST, so I decided to believe in my own words first and take FEST for a spin with Groovy UIs. There are a couple of articles out there that show how to use FEST (previously know as TestNG-Abbot), I picked the examples shown at Andy's In pursuit of code quality: Automate GUI testing with TestNG-Abbot, following the spirit of TDD, I started with the test and later moved to the real code. (Jun 08, 2007)

Andres Almiray: Fusing with Groovy II

This is a follow up of Fusing with Groovy. After a couple of tries to get a custom UI component annotated with Fuse coded in Groovy to work, I decided to talk to the pillow and let the issue aside. The next morning I noticed I was always running the tests with the Groovy interpreter (from 1.1-BETA-1 of course) and decided to try again, but with the Java interpreter instead. Lo and behold , it worked! (Jun 08, 2007)

Mark Reinhold: OpenJDK Community Cosmology

Every community needs a creation myth. Here’s ours.

(Jun 08, 2007)

Jan Erik Paulsen: Introducing Colorspace

Colorspace is a mashup (that is what the kids call it nowadays) of the Substance LAF initialization code, the Xoetrope color wheel, the Quaqua color picker and Teppefall Darkstar.

(Jun 08, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Java 6, Mac OS and Substance

So, what is missing in the last dev build of Apple VM 6.0 that is available? —  Kirill Grouchnikov
  (Jun 08, 2007)

John O'Conner: Swing Application Framework Architecture

The first of a brief series, this post summarizes the Swing Application Framework. —  John O'Conner
  (Jun 07, 2007)

Andres Almiray: Fusing with Groovy

Recently Daniel Spiewak announced the availability of Fuse 0.4, having worked on a custom solution for resource injection I decided to give Fuse a look, as I remembered that it was used in a little app that astonished everyone at last year's JavaOne, I'm talking of course about Aerith. (Jun 07, 2007)

Evan Summers: Chronicles of the Trough: Sneak Preview

Here is a sneak preview of a trivial feed reader app using the Java6 SystemTray. It checks a few preconfigured (Java) feeds every 10 minutes, popping up a message when a new article is spotted. The feedtray app itself is small (18k using pack200), but depends on ROME and AppFramework and their dependencies ie. jDOM and SwingWorker, so the total packed size is around 250k, and unpacked, well... much more!

(Jun 07, 2007)

Jeff Martin: Key Frame Animation in JFXBuilder/JavaFX

In the last week we've been adding animation support to JFXBuilder. Fortunately, JFXBuilder?s existing key frame animation model matches well with JavaFX - in particular, using the JavaFX ?dur? statement....

(Jun 06, 2007)

Scott Hommel: Knowing the Audience

So my latest assignment is to update the custom painting section of the Swing tutorial. The version that's currently online is really a combination of two separate topics: custom painting, and guidelines for creating custom components. A while back I had posted a proposed outline to this blog about how to update that lesson. It sparked some discussion between myself and the Swing engineering team, resulting in a decision to break the material up even more into two separate lessons... (Jun 06, 2007)

Jasper Potts: Nimbus L&F; Update

So it has been a while since I blogged about Nimbus, Java One has come and gone and I am sure you are all wondering whats happening to it. Well things have changed for Nimbus since it was announced at Desktop Matters conference in March. The initial plan was for Nimbus to be a open source project jointly run by Ben Galbraith and myself. In early prototype I hacked together thats available from nimbus.dev.java.net was very well accepted both inside Sun and in the swing community. As a result a decision was made to bring the Nimbus L&F; into the JDK as part of the new Consumer JRE. (Jun 06, 2007)

John O'Conner: POJOs on the Desktop with the Java Persistence API

Reading the persistence portion of the EJB 3.0 specification, the best thing I discovered was that I could use plain ol' Java objects -- POJOs -- for both my application logic and persistence needs on the desktop. —  John O'Conner
  (Jun 05, 2007)

Romain Guy: Resource Injection with Fuse 0.4

Daniel Spiewak, editor for the EclipseZone, and I released Fuse 0.4 this weekend. Fuse is a resource injection library mainly thought for GUI programming. I presented Fuse several times in this blog already. The two major features in Fuse 0.4, at least to me, are the resource caching to improve performance and the auto injection facilities. [...] (Jun 04, 2007)

Chet Haase: Existence Proof

We're half-way through editing the "proof" pages. That must mean the book is nearly done, right? Please? (May 31, 2007)

John O'Conner: The Swing Application (Un)Framework

The Swing Application Framework (JSR 296) is hardly a framework at all, not in the typical sense anyway. The framework is probably the lightest, easiest to use one I've ever experienced. —  John O'Conner
  (Jun 04, 2007)

Kirill Grouchnikov: Removing functionality from a stable API

I'm considering removing a few pieces of functionality that have been in my library for a while. Read inside on the reasons why. —  Kirill Grouchnikov
  (Jun 02, 2007)

Chris Oliver: New JavaFX Script Build Posted To OpenJFX

We just posted a new build of JFX which contains the following fixes and features:

UI

1. Shape Morphing
2. JavaFXPad to search for dependent classes
3. Mouse Wheel support in Canvas
4. Baseline alignment of Text

Interpreter

1. Bind is now only allowed in initialization contexts
2. Fixed array assignment problem reported on openjfx forum
3. Fixed bug with while condition of dur expression reported on
   openjfx user list

JSR 223

1. Fixed problems reported on openjfx user list
   

(May 31, 2007)

David Shay: Minimal HTML from a JTextPane

If you want to edit formatted text and get an HTML output, the classes to use in Java are either JEditorPane or JTextPane, the second one being a subclass from the first one. However, when you call the getText() method to get the HTML output, you get the following... (May 31, 2007)

Extreme GUI Makeover 2007

"one of the most enjoyable session in all of JavaOne"... (May 31, 2007)

Apple has posts a QuickTime for Java Security Update

An implementation issue exists in QuickTime for Java, which may allow instantiation or manipulation of objects outside the bounds of the allocated heap. By enticing a user to visit a web page containing a maliciously crafted Java applet, an attacker can trigger the issue which may lead to arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue by performing additional validation of Java applets. (May 31, 2007)