Java desktop links of the week, June 15

Well, having skipped a post whilst I was at JavaOne, I was well aware that there would be a huge catchup necessary. Not surprisingly, the bulk of this weeks post is JavaFX.

To everyone out there reading this – enjoy. Have a fun week, try not to catch Swine flu, and for those of you in the northern hemisphere, don’t remind me that you’re enjoying Summer too often.

Swing

• One of the people I met at JavaOne, Ken Orr has just posted the slides to his ‘Simply Sweet Components’ presentation. Definitely well worth checking out!
• Very little news at JavaOne was made about JWebPane. The general jist that I got from a few managers at Sun is that the debate is about how to release the component – i.e. should it be included with the JDK/JRE, or should it be a separate jar/module? Ken Orr summarises this in a post with a few decent comments. Finally, the last word of course goes to Alexey Ushakov, the guy in charge of the JWebPane project. He posted a link to his JavaOne slides for more information.
• Kirill Grouchnikov posts about the Flamingo ribbon component now supporting small buttons in ribbon galleries. He also posted links to the slides he used at JavaOne for his Flamingo talk.

JavaFX

• Got something to say about JavaFX 1.2? Blog about it and you may win $500 or a $25 Amazon gift card from Sun. Find out more here. Frankly I should win for my services to the community
• Richard Bair and Jasper Potts, both of the JavaFX team at Sun, have taken it upon themselves to increase the amount and quality of information around about JavaFX. To this end, they have started FXExperience.com, which appears to be a very good source of information, straight from the horses mouth. It so far has been regularly updated, so keep an eye on it!
• Richard Bair has just posted an article discussing the skinning architecture in JavaFX. Previously he also posted an article on the Caspian skin introduced in JavaFX 1.2.
• Following JavaOne, Amy Fowler has put up another useful post, this time on the “insider’s guide to blending Swing and JavaFX“. This is certainly a very good read for anyone wishing to dip their toes into JavaFX.
• Chris Campbell has also made a post-JavaOne blog post on the effects framework he was responsible for in JavaFX. In this post, he shows how it is possible to chain effects in JavaFX, but that order matters to get good looking effects.
• James Clarke posts an indepth tutorial on the JavaFX async task. For anyone writing JavaFX applications where any decent amount of work is running on the CPU, get to know the details in this post, lest your users abuse you for a slow and unresponsive GUI.
• Another article on the async task in JavaFX was written by Baechul, and this one includes pictures for any attention deficit disorder sufferers among us.
• Josh Marinacci posts his five most important features in JavaFX 1.2. In summary, the top five are Linux/Solaris support, UI controls, charts, data persistence, and speeeeeeeed.
• Speaking of charts, Dean Iverson posts an article on creating charts in JavaFX 1.2 using the chart API. He also has a post on creating XY charts using the same API.
• Dean Iverson put out a new beta version (0.5) of his JFXtras core library for JavaFX. This release makes it JavaFX 1.2 compatible.
• Stephen Chin released a refcard on DZone which introduces people to JavaFX 1.2. It is a good introduction if you want to learn the basic concepts.
• Speaking of Stephen Chin, his widgetFX project has a competition running currently that has the prize of a copious amount of ebooks to lure you in. Check it out if you think you can write a widget for the widgetFX sidebar, and are short on ebooks.
• Thomas Künneth posts on ‘hacking JavaFX binding‘. This article takes a closer look at its internal structure and demonstrates how JavaFX Binding can be “misused” as a binding framework for Swing.
• Fabrizio Giudici posts on how to use JUnit to test JavaFX applications within the NetBeans IDE. It involves patching JUnit, which leaves me feeling a little uncomfortable. Hopefully this may be simplified in the future.
• In another post, Fabrizio Giudici posts on using JavaFX Script in the controller part of a MVC application.
• Finally, Fabrizio mentions that whilst binding in JavaFX is cool, you should be very careful when using it.
• Dmitry Kostovarov posts a quick example of how to use the JFileChooser Swing component in JavaFX. Pretty obvious stuff really. Just remember this means that the application is no longer able to be used in the ‘common’ profile.
• Seema Gupta has two posts, one on the effect of calling functions on null objects in JavaFX, and the other on how to store data on the local filesystem.
• Rakesh Menon has two posts, one on skinning controls in JavaFX and the other on passing arguments to a JavaFX application, and subsequently retrieving and using them within the code.
• If you’re wanting to develop using JavaFX Script, but are tied to Eclipse, Exadel has a plugin for Eclipse to make developing JavaFX easier. They also have a tutorial post up to explain how to set it up.
• Start Class 0830 has a post up titled ‘JavaFX and Google Maps‘, which allows for a person to see a portion of a map by inputting either a location, or the lattitude and longitude values directly.

Griffon

• Geertjan Wielenga has been busy posting a number of articles on Griffon. Firstly, he highlights how to use NetBeans with the new Griffon plugin. He then wrote a series of articles on how to incorporate a wizard into a Griffon application – you can see parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 for all of the relevant information. Finally, he wrote an article on how to use Groovy as the model in a JavaFX application.
• Another big believer in Griffon is of course Andres Almiray, and he has been blogging prolifically in the last two weeks. He has posted articles on embedding GSQL into Griffon to act as a database, styling a Griffon application using CSSBuilder (find out more about the latest CSSBuilder release also). Finally, Andres posts about FXBuilder, a builder which will allow for you to embed JavaFX inside a Griffon application.
• If you want to learn more about Griffon, Bob at Transentia posts an article titled ‘Riding the Griffon‘ that gives a good introduction with a sample application. Additionally, Juxie.com posts two articles talking about setting up and using Griffon.

And that’s us for another week! Keep out of (too much) trouble