Java desktop links of the week, April 25

This weeks post comes to you from Santa Clara in the heart of Silicon Valley, so pardon the brevity, and due to my travel please excuse me if I missed any links.

This week saw the release of JavaFX 1.3, which comes with a heap of improvements. Rather than repeat the details here, I have links to the main links below. Let's get into the news.

Swing

• Kirill Grouchnikov has been improving the breadcrumb component, including making it use the Flamingo command button component. If you're using the breadcrumb component, you shouldn't notice any difference other than a more polished look.
• Eugene Ryzhikov has announced the 1.0 release of his Swing TaskDialog project. It looks to be a very useful component, so check it out.

JavaFX

• As mentioned, JavaFX 1.3 came out this week. You can read the official blog post about it, check out the new features, and read the migration guide to understand what was changed since 1.2.
• Over at FX Experience, Richard, Jasper and I posted a 'Welcome JavaFX 1.3' post, and also covered our top 10 features of JavaFX 1.3. We also plan to start putting up a bunch of posts over the next week or two to cover more details in JavaFX 1.3.
• Stephen Chin has covered his top 10 features in the new JavaFX 1.3 release.
• Dean Iverson has done a great job filling in the gaps on how to style JavaFX, this time with a blog introducing how to use the new CSS styling available in JavaFX 1.3.
• Jim Weaver has posted a 3D JavaFX application that demonstrates some of the new 3D API and functionality in javaFX 1.3.
• Johannes Schneider has done a bunch of posts recently, so I'll just mention the titles here: 'JavaFX: Creating custom controls – the right way', 'JavaFX: Bounds by example', 'JavaFX: Gotcha in skin assignment' and 'JavaFX 1.3: Binding improved'.
• Pedro Duque Vieira has blogged about adding animated characters to the Modellus project he is working. Of additional interest is that this application is a merging of Swing and JavaFX. Check out the YouTube video to see it in action.
• Mark Anro Silver has posted two code samples on JFXStudio. The first one shows glow and lighting effects, and the second post showing how you can apply effects on top of graphics for interesting effects.
• Peter Karich has posted about his thoughts on creating simple desktop widgets in JavaFX. He also posted about creating a shadow motion effect in JavaFX.
• Itssmee has blogged about comparing the Processing language to JavaFX Script.
• Have a play with the MetaMaps tool being created in JavaFX, and be sure to offer any feedback you may have.

Right. That's that. Time to put the feet up and blob in front of Discovery channel. Catch you all in a week.