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

It's worth noting...

[AKAImBatman]

...that mustang is also the first Java version to be developed under an Open Source type model. The CVS is open to guests over on http://www.java.net, thus allowing for immediate feedback and bugfixes. It has been a real boon for the gaming community, as they've been able to direct several key performance features.

The look and feel of Swing.

[chkorn]

Yeah! This is really something that should be made better.
Always when I use some Swing based applications I'm remembered that the times of ugly GUI's aren't over yet.

Re:The look and feel of Swing.

[TiMac]

They are improving the Windows and GTK Look and Feel...but I'm hoping also that either Sun or Apple tackle the Mac OS X look and feel of Java apps.

Sure, you can code Cocoa apps in Java and use Java in those ways...but pure Java executables programmed in Swing still lack the complete purity of Mac OS X. Apple ships tools in the Developer Tools to improve Java (like Jar Bundler) but the UI still isn't perfect.

SubPixel Rendering

[aCapitalist]

It looks like they've finally addressed this issue, but I think Sun is a little late.

Personally, I can deal with non-native look-n-feel, but when the fonts look like something circa 1988 on an Amiga, how can anyone take Swing seriously.

I never understood why they couldn't use platform specific code for fonts, and if not possible then go into fallback mode and paint everything themselves.

Swing has been a disaster. I believe it was the OTI guys (who now work on Eclipse and SWT) that told Sun not to go the route of "give me a handle to a brush and we'll paint everything ourselves", but some other group won that debate.

And thank god for .NET/Mono being around to give Sun a little kick in the rear to get moving on things.

Re:SubPixel Rendering

[bnenning]

Swing has been a disaster. I believe it was the OTI guys (who now work on Eclipse and SWT) that told Sun not to go the route of "give me a handle to a brush and we'll paint everything ourselves", but some other group won that debate.

Indeed. The implementation of AWT sucked, but it at least had the right idea: the host OS has facilities for drawing interface elements, so use them rather than reinventing the wheel. Apple's Swing L&F is halfway decent because they use native APIs to draw widgets, and according to the article Sun is now doing the same thing for Windows and Linux. Desktop Java would be in a much better state if they hadn't gotten sidetracked for years trying to make apps on every OS look identically bad.

Re:SubPixel Rendering

[shutdown -p now]

I believe it was the OTI guys (who now work on Eclipse and SWT) that told Sun not to go the route of "give me a handle to a brush and we'll paint everything ourselves", but some other group won that debate.

Strictly speaking, this approach can work very well. That's exactly how Qt handles things - and it's damn hard to tell a Qt app on Windows from a native one (not sure how things are on Mac, but judging by the screenshots, it's fine there as well).

Disclaimer on the url "we would LIKE to" have in..

[Assmasher]

...the next version.

Not quite the same thing as "this is in the next version."

Re:Additional items

[lawpoop]

I don't get it. If sun was responsible for 64-bit computers being commonplace, how come Java doesn't support 64 bits?

Re:JAVA - the little train that could

[hanshotfirst]

And how long did it take BASIC to get this?
When is it coming out for FORTRAN and COBOL?
10 years is still young as far as languages go.

Seems like they are really improving things

[FedeTXF]

I use many java desktop apps in my day to day tasks on my linux desktop. There is no better way to connect to multiple databases than Squirrel , No better way to code in Java than NetBeans and no better editor than JEdit

I think Java 5 already has great desktop features like shared class data, and 2D acceleration for 2D acelerated hardware (which I don't have yet!).

Re:Java Desktop

[MemoryDragon]

Actually Sun is not throwing in the towel, Swing has done an interesting approach no other Widget set has done so far. They basically went the way, of rendering the widgets still in software, but the underlying graphics layer is hardware accelerated if possible and the rendering data for the skins is directly parsed from the underlying OS skinning engine if present.

And Swing has gotten much faster that way. Swing has been already more than usable in 1.4 and I recently checked the latest 1.6/6.0 builds, and all I can say is wohaaa... The guy in 1.6 at least on Windows is very snappy. I have had running Firefox and SwingSet2 running side by side and SwingSet2 blew firefox away rendering speedwise.

Re:Sounds great...couple more things...

[mccalli]

Basically you end up having two different versions of your application, one that works with WS and one that works as a native application, which stinks from a QA perspective

Why? I'm genuinely curious here - I also use WebStart, and I don't need to end up with two versions of the code. Be interested to hear what's restricting you.

Cheers,
Ian

What I want

[ToasterofDOOM]

Is stability, security, and more speed. OOo 2 beta is SLOW and most issues i have with it are Java related in some way.

I knock my pipes out writing SwingWT...

[bobintetley]

...and nobody bloody cares or remembers.

SwingWT is a FREE implementation of the Swing APIs on top of SWT so you get all the juicy nativeness of SWT and all of the nice APIness of Swing.