Java desktop links of the week, May 4

Weeks seem to be speeding by at the moment, but the volume of news is still massive. Here is the most important news from the last week:

General

• David Salter posts with hints on how to optimise Eclipse .

Swing

• Eric Burke messaged me to let me know that the company he works for, Object Computing, Inc, has put up an article titled ‘MiGLayout: The one Java layout manager that does it all ‘. It looks to be a very good article, and one that I’ll definitely read given some free time. At present, I have never used MiGLayout – I’m still using JGoodies FormLayout, which I understand to be the foundation for the concepts in MiGLayout. I’d love to move to MiGLayout someday, as I know how much more productive I am using these kinds of layout managers.
• Java 7 just got public API support for shaped and translucent windows , and Kirill Grouchnikov is kind enough to provide an overview of the changes.
• Jean-Francois Poilpret posts an update detailing the current state of play for the DesignGridLayout project , a layout manager for Swing. He is working towards a new release, due for release in the next four or five months two to three months.
• Fabrizio Giudici asks ‘which logging facility [should be used] for Swing applications? ‘. An interesting discussion into the murky world of logging
• I come across a post which might be of interest, even though it’s a little dated. It is about using gradients to improve the look and feel of your application .
• Michael Schnell emailed me about an article he has written about the MVC pattern in Java . Due to it’s length I can’t say I’ve had a chance to read it, but it’s there if anyone is interested.
• I was emailed by Nicolas de Pomereu , who wanted to introduce everyone to cGeep, a commercial encryption application written using Swing .
• Lilian Chamontin emailed me to let me know that VLSolutions has released their VLDocking docking framework as a dual-licensed LGPL / Commercial library , with a focus on LGPL. This replaces the previous CeCILL (GPL) license that was used.

JavaFX

• James Sugrue started a pretty big discussion regarding JavaFX and it’s feasibility .
• Michael Heinrichs continues his detailed articles, this time he is focusing on best practices for improving performance in JavaFX mobile applications .
• Jeff Frieson posts an example of the emboss effect available in the JavaFX language .
• Rakesh Menon posts a simple fish eye menu example, with source code included .
• Rakesh Menon also has a post detailing how to achieve ‘always on top’ for JavaFX applications .
• JavaFX.com has a few new or updated articles, including animation basics , how to create a quick and dirty reload button , how to develop and run offline applications and how to go from beginner to intermediate in JavaFX .
• Raghu Nair posts how to show a media progress bar for a media player in JavaFX .

Pivot

• Todd Volkert posts about an approach for table row editing in Apache Pivot .

Have a great week everyone, and as always, make sure you spend time away from the computer with friends and family!