Tuning Java Swing apps for Mac OS X

tarkin writes "Sven Van Caekenberghe just finished a tutorial article, 'Tuning Java Swing applications for Mac OS X', that explains how to tune standard Java Swing applications to conform to the Mac OS X User Experience and make them virtually indistinguishable from native Mac OS X applications. Topics include handling basic Apple events, packaging applications, adding a custom icon, file dialogs, about boxes, preferences, customizing the menu bar, supporting Finder drag-and-drop, standard help, and basic multi-document support, as well as using MRJToolkit and MRJAppBuilder. The PDF of the article, as well as a Mac OS X disk image with a binary version of the two demo applications and the source code can downloaded from his home page."

Comments

Apple Tuning Java Swing

[L. VeGas]

Isn't that an old Count Basie song?

Not bad...

[NetRanger]

Swing is much easier to create useful applications with; it's good to see that someone is helping go it cross-platform to the Mac, to where it makes sense with the system paradigm. Unfortunately the controls in the standard Swing package look a little too much like Windows 9X.

Perhaps the next thing we need is skinnable Swing? :-)

Re:Not bad...

[smileyy]

You mean the different Swing look-and-feels? Already done.

Re:Not bad...

[foobar104]

Perhaps the next thing we need is skinnable Swing? :-)

I think you typo'd here. Surely you meant to say, "the last thing we need is skinnable Swing."

My method of java development

[BoomerSooner]

For my apps (that are cross platform) I build the classes in java and the UI in whichever platform I'm using. This allows each program to look good on the intended platform. For Apple Cocoa (java) programming via the Interface Builder is a wonderful tool (and free to boot!). However, I'm not a big fan of Swing. It is very unresponsive on even the fastest systems and even though working with a program can be just as efficient, as all Mac OS 9 users can tell you OS X doesn't "feel" as fast. That is the perception of Java based programs (that aren't native compiled), they are just slow. Sun should really consider a non-backward compatible new set of UI components because Swing was just kiss and make up for AWT (painful beast). I hate the layout managers and building your own, while it is an option really doesn't help in quick development.

Re:Java on OS X??? Got to be kidding...

[BitGeek]

Yeah. Sure.

You don't know what you're talking about.

Applications can be slow. The OS is not slow.

Java on OSX is rather speedy, and compares favorably with the previous platform I've used it on, Linux.

Cocoa apps are totally speedy, as fast as C apps.

Carbon apps that are poorly made will be slow, and if they're really poor (like IE) they can slow the whole system down.

But your generalizations are just wrong.

SWT?

[smileyy]

What about SWT, as used in eclipse?

Re:SWT?

[BoomerSooner]

More details? What is it a layout manager?

Re:SWT?

[smileyy]

This looks like the best introduction:

http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-SWT-Design -1/SWT-Design-1.html

He's right.

[BoomerSooner]

Java is significantly faster on OS X than it is on Linux. It's my understanding the reason the Java versions lag a little behind is Apple helps optimize them to aid with the speed issues.

That being said, I just want a compiler that can build native apps with one code base. Yes I know C++ can "theoretically" do this, but not if you're trying to make it a true native app. I want to say build file menu and the compiler knows on apple it's integrated and on a PC it's got it's own menu interface, on linux you can choose how you want it laid out (SDI versus MDI).

This is the killer app for developers and I personally would pay several thousand for a development environment that could do this. I'll return to my pipe dream shortly.

Re:He's right.

[BitGeek]

I thought that is what you got with Java on the mac.

I've been doing mostly server side stuff so I can't say for sure, but it is my understanding that you write a Swing UI Java App on the Mac and on the Mac you get the Aqua look and feel. This is from conversations with an Apple developer who was the person who wrote it, but I may have misunderstood.

At the very least it should be one of the choices for looks that you get with swing (Remember windows, metalic, etc?)

So you write a swing app and on OS X it looks like OS X and on Windows it looks like Windows and on Linux it looks like Windows and on Solaris it looks like Swing.

You're right about apple optimizing their JVM etc. The reason 1.4 is delayed (so the rumors go) is that they are doing a complete rewrite. From what I saw with 1.3 they've done some great improvements on what Sun ships.

Wouldn't realbasic do what you want as well? One language-- though it has C support as well-- and deploy on at least Windows and Mac with the same UI.

Inherently when you make a multi-platform dynamically-chosen-look and feel, or consistent look and feel across all platforms, there WILL be compromises because the platforms are different.

So, I'm not sure what you're looking for-- if you think that someone can make one that dynamically picks the right UI without any compromises (java's slowness, or ui variations) then I think you're not quite understanding the problem correctly.

Personally, I have no desire to support the windows platform anymore, so I just do everything in Cocoa with Objective-C. And objective-c rocks. I thought Java was the paragon of perfect languages, but I have to admit I like objective-c better.

Re:He's right.

[Andre Breton]

They *try* to look like Aqua, but if used Mac OS X longer than a day you should notice the difference :) And for LimeWire: Yes, it is awfully slow, but I use another Java App on Mac OS X: CrushFTP and FTP server. And I'm just happy with it's performance. I guess Java is not the problem, the programmers are.

Best Tuning Advice (for real)

[anarkhos]

The best advice I can give Mac OS X users who want to run a Swing app is to change the default L&F to something other than Aqua.

Swing apps are incapable of behaving like Mac apps. Thus using the Aqua theme for Swing apps is the absolute worst possible combination!

One of the key reasons Swing apps will NEVER behave like Mac apps is the Java file primitive. The misnomer File class should really be called FilePath. Since (100% Java) Swing apps use file paths as file primitives this implies that file paths are constant. Thus if you move/rename an open file (or host directory/non-root volume) the Swing app will become confused.

Re:Best Tuning Advice (for real)

[Molz]

One reason for using the Aqua L&F, though, is that it is better optimized for OS X. Try running a complex application in Metal on OS X and again in Aqua. In my experiance the difference was quite aparent. You have a point though that the feel of java apps on OS X is still not quite right, but using Metal isn't any better (it just makes things more ugly).

Cocoa apps have the same file path problem. NSDocument based apps now use FSRef's as well as NSURL's so they don't, but if you write a Cocoa app that doesn't use NSDocument, its up to you to do the FSRef magic you need to track files based on their HFS+ id number.

Re:Best Tuning Advice (for real)

[anarkhos]

The advantage of using a non-Aqua theme for Swing apps is you don't get confused. You see a Metal app you expect Swing behavior, then you see an Aqua app you expect Aqua behavior.

Your assessment of Cocoa apps is correct except I would add that FSRefs also work on UFS volumes (and probably others) with the one caveat that you can't pass an FSRef to another process.

What Apple ought to do is what they did with the Toolbox more then a dacade ago which is to say deprecate functions (methods) which use file paths as arguments. Instead they ought to use something equivalent to an NSFSRef as a simple file primitive. They should also revise the Aqua HI Guidelines to clarify the behavior of "Save" and "Revert" to reflect the proper Mac behavior which can currently be had by using NSDocuments or FSRefs. They should also clarify that a file's path is variable, not constant.

Ironically Swing apps behave more like Cocoa apps in at least one aspect: the behavior of text views. NSLayoutManager doesn't behave correctly. For example selecting down on the right side will select the trailing linefeed of the last line selected which doesn't follow the Mac convention.

Unfortunately these problems are NOT going to be fixed unless more people send Apple feedback and bug reports.

java ... skins ...

[Unordained]

Isn't part of the aim of Java apps not to know too much about their environment? Maybe I'm only thinking of Java applets, but it seems that if you're going to build stuff in Java, to run in a VM, you should be hoping for the benefit of cross-platform compatibility, not your ability to fake the look and feel of an OS you could have programmed natively for, in, say, C or somesuch. If it's going to be Java ... at least don't force it to look like it was built for only one platform. If MacOS users -really- hate your application because it doesn't look like everything else ... well ... KDE vs. Gnome users can just say "welcome to the club!" ...

Your right but that's not what I was asking for.

[BoomerSooner]

I want an .exe for windows, a .bin for linux, a .whateverthehell for mac, a .bin for solaris, ...

From one source if someone built a compiler that could understand the UI nuances between OSes I would spend loads. Not to mention could you imagine the apps that would be built?

Seriously if a company could use (lets call it NativeJava) NativeJava and build for Linux/Solaris/OS X/OS 9/Windows 9x/Windows 2000/XP with one source file that could be compiled via processor emulation for all platforms, there would be some great Mac/Linux applications because the barrier to entry for building Mac/Linux Apps would be almost zero (you'd want to buy those systems to test of course). Realbasic (as irritating as their marketing guy is) is the closest product to this. However it would need a lot more work to get there.

I just want to hit F5 and have my app built for several platforms and as a developer/business person, I would pay a shitload for this functionality. I currently build apps for all the previously mentioned platforms (except OS 9, I am late to the Mac scene).

Eclipse? Feh!

[Latent Heat]

I could download and install Borland JBuilder and build and run their sample apps without breaking a sweat.

I have given up on the Eclipse IDE -- the checklists for downloading samples are all two pages long, their menus and dialogs are all non-standard, and I have not yet figured out what options to specify to actually run any of the samples I have built.

Is it just me or is Eclipse just impossible to figure out? I have used (for C++) everything from Code Warrior to Borland to VC++, but Eclipse has me completely stumped. I suppose I could figure it out if I devoted a couple weeks to it, but I just don't have that kind of time to evaluate something I am not sure is of any use.

As to the SWT, isn't that the kind of thing Microsoft got sued for?

As SWT is tightly coupled through JNI to the target system, you have to distribute a .DLL (some kind of extra software blob) with your SWT app for every possible target system. Yeah, yeah, AWT/Swing has to eventually call something native, but those customizations are part of the Java runtime you install for each target system, not some extra blob that you need to distribute.

Also, SWT is much more complete on Windows while the Linux version is "in progress" and the OS-X version is a distant dream. Now isn't this kind of write-once, run under Windows just the thing Microsoft got sued for?

Re:Eclipse? Feh!

[smileyy]

eclipse took me a small amount of time to get used to, but to me, its the best Java IDE on the market. Of course, the availability of refactoring is the bar to clear to even enter the competition, so that limits things a bit. JBuilder blows goats in comparison. My recommendation would be to create your own project in eclipse and start using it, rather than using sample apps.

To be fair, I haven't tried eclipse for Mac OS X, but all new builds of the 2.1 series are being created for Mac OS X as well, including the stable Milestone 1.

Is it the same as what Microsoft did? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure you had to use MS's JVM to run Microsoft "Java". SWT will work with any JVM, provided the appropriate native libraries are installed. I am a little disheartened by the limited number of alternate platforms available, but more keep coming. Give it time.