New Desktop Features Of Next Java

bonch writes "Sun has posted the new desktop features of the next Java, codename Mustang. Improvements to Swing look and feel, OpenGL 2D renderer performance, AWT features such as the ability to add a tray/panel icon, and improved deployment capabilities."

Comments

Re:SWT

[mark-t]

If you didn't RTA, you may not have noticed that the *FIRST* thing on their list of improvements was improving the native look and feel for both the windows and gtk platforms.

Also, Swing integrates well into the rest of Java, including Java2D, where SWT does not.

Re:The look and feel of Swing.

[MassacrE]

Personally, I'd be happier if they completely dropped swing support on the Mac ,or at least removed aqua L&F.

There is a proliferation of really horrid java applications on the Mac because people don't understand that you cannot WORA and have GUI make sense. Users of different operating systems have different needs and expectations, even when they are equivalent 'types' of users with relatively equal computer experience.

Re:Java Desktop

[DarkSkiesAhead]

Simple really-- some programmers are lazy. They can't be bothered with optimizing their code for individual platforms ... as soon as I find out something's written in Java I can immediately ignore it

Sorry, but that's a pretty ignorant attitude. Judging an application soley on being java-based is a poor method. Rather, you should ask if the developing language is appropriate for the task. If someone told me they wrote a graphically intense FPS in java I would be suspicious. But, if the app only needs to be light and portable java may be a good choice. It allows for very easy control of how the application looks on multiple operating systems. A good example of a nice-looking java app with no speed issues is Limewire. It runs quickly, works well and can be updated more efficiently than if they had used a graphical toolkit for python or C. Not that anything is wrong with chosing python or C either. It entirely depends on your application requirements and development resources. Brushing off all apps written for the JVM (or any development kit) will cause you to miss out on a good app sometime.

Re:Additional items

[iwadasn]

It does, on linux and Solaris, I believe. No 64 bits on windows, perhaps because windows doesn't support it?

As someone who develops Java desktop apps...

[ChiralSoftware]

I would like to see three things:

First, it seems like KDE/Qt has more momentum than GTK on the desktop. Qt apps look better and are more integrated with eachother. Suse is the dominant desktop Linux distro and Suse is KDE-oriented. I'm glad that Java is going to be using native GTK for rendering, but what I would really like to see is native Qt. Maybe they could create some kind of interface to make it easier to plug in different rendering systems? Maybe they could open source Java and let the community take care of it? Maybe they don't care because desktop Linux is only about 5% of the market anyway? But still, it's something I would like to see.

The second thing they need is a "SwingLite", or some easier way to do common things. For example, it is very common to need a text field that allows the user to enter a number, but not text. Should be easy, right? This is the code I have to use to do it:

formattedTextField.setFormatterFactory(new DefaultFormatterFactory(new NumberFormatter(NumberFormat.getIntegerInstance()) ));

That's just wrong. I should be able to say:

formattedTextField.setFormat("d+");

or maybe:

formattedTextField.setFormat(FormattedTextField.IN TEGER_ONLY);

The above example, involving two different factory classes to just get the field to accept integers only, puts a high burden of knowledge on the programmer, and Swing is full of stuff like that. It's great that the power is there because I can write my own hierarchy of text formatting factories and objects that enforces correctly-entered Sandhi rules, but that doesn't come up very often, and what does come up very often is having to enter a plain old number, date, currency value, that kind of thing. And I'm just using this one example, but this kind of over-design is all over the place in Swing.

The final problem that they have is putting emphasis on plugable look and feel. Application developers shouldn't get to decide the look and feel of their apps. That should be determined by the desktop environment. Pluggable look and feel is not a feature; it is a bug. It should be deprecated and removed.

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