I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions of frameworks to give an old desktop application a much needed facelift.
The application has had a long life without anyone giving any attention to its exterior resulting in a monster with an 80s look.
I've just downloaded and tried MyDoggy framework for making windows floatable and dockable. So I'm looking similar for quick and easy fixes that will bring a dead looking application back to life.
I think you don't want to rewrite your app, right? Because it seems as all the other guys think so, suggesting SWT and JavaFX.
To pimp your existing Swing App, take a look at jgoodies.com, the substance look and feel or the swinglabs
Just changing the look and feel and some components might already help to give your application a second youth. Consider for example Violet which is IMO a nice looking application. It uses a custom theme based on the PgsLookAndFeel and some components from L2FProd.com.
You could give Oracle's ADF a try.
If you want to go with the latest and greatest, you could try JavaFX. Bu tof course using good old swing or the more OS agnostic SWT does the trick as well.
There's ofcourse the Eclipse Rich Client Platform or the Netbeans Rich Client Platform.
Related
I'm developing a desktop application using java + SWT/JFace, which I'm not very familiar. The program need to show some pictures presenting the program's progress like this.
Sorry for my poor English, I'm not sure whether it's suitable to use the word "moving", actually I mean that the diagram is changing like Flash when an event occurs. I'm considering making some flash movies to play, but it seems difficult as I need to add third-party jars and I'm not good at flash. Is there any better way to doing work like this? I need your suggestion.
Thank you and sorry for my poor English again if I made some English mistakes that troubled you :)
You can use java2d and the awt-swt bridge or there is a framework called Timing Framework which works for swt and swing.
probably you need a gif embeded in your window. java cannot paly any animations unless you have series pictures and play them one by one very soon.
I am used to making web pages with animation using JQuery. I am now making a Java Desktop Application using Netbeans and Netbeans' Swing and without any animation it's looking pretty plain and boring.
Are there any resources I can use for a guide to implement animation into my program?
Does anyone have suggestions on what method to use?
Edit: I am not interested in something I'd have to buy.
A good starting point would be Filthy Rich Clients. Both the principles and the framework code may be helpful to you.
If you're looking for a nice look and feel then Substance might be a good way forward. It's not over-the-top animated or anything like that, but it's got a lot of skins and some in particular look very nice.
Many thanks to stemm who pointed me in the right direction.
I decided to use JavaFX (JavaFX 2 to be exact)
Here is some resources I am using:
http://download.oracle.com/javafx/
http://download.oracle.com/javafx/2.0/swing/jfxpub-swing.htm
I would like to do a visually appealing / user-friendly GUI in java. Swing is a limited in terms of "skin" customization. I'm thinking about JavaFX, but I don't get it yet,
what can I achieve with this technology ?
how hard is it ?
do you have examples of real-life examples of Swing/JavaFX integration ?
I would like to do something in this spirit of this, which is built on the .NET framework:
original link: http://www.patrickpayet.com/net/?p=329
edit: is their any getting started overview sample code that I can read to get a general feeling of the work needed to be done to achieve something in the spirit of the screenshot? maybe something like the miglayout's swing demo http://www.migcalendar.com/miglayout/swingdemoapp.jnlp
edit2: I found http://download.java.net/general/openjfx/demos/tutorial.jnlp it's really basic though, linked from http://www.deitel.com/ResourceCenters/Programming/JavaFX/JavaFXTutorialsandDemos/tabid/2187/Default.aspx
Doing such a GUI with JavaFX seems to be rather easy.
For a rapid view on the JavaFX echosystem, I would suggest you to take a look at those sites, showing most of the bleeding edge JavaFX technologies :
Jonathan Giles blog on Swing/JavaFX/Griffon
Dean Iverson blog going more in details about JavaFX components
Amy Fowler blog
And finally, take a look at JavaFX home site samples.
Yes, Swing is very customizable. I recommend reading Filthy Rich Clients.
For an example, have a look at Cezanne L&F.
Swing alone can also create awesome looking UIs. You can explore online for number of plugins and samples to add various features. I'd recommend you go through Romain Guy's Blog & Read his book Filthy Rich Clients. I found this blog really cool.
Swing won't disappoint you.
Swing's L&F can help you in this case.
The traditional way to customize L&F is to write your own UI classes for all components, which is not easy.
The Synth L&F is included in JRE5 and become mature in JRE6. With Synth L&F you can customize your own look and feel with images and painter classes. You can also take a look at this IDE for Synth based L&F.
Also checkout my entry to the JFXStudio challenge last year:
http://jfxstudio.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/challenge-five-winners/
This is a very simple "Video Poker" game written in just less than 3,000 characters (ie 30 lines of code). Note that 90% of the graphical elements are images, which gives you an idea of the scope you have for producing "sexy" UIs.
I'll also add that the main elements of this application were written in one evening. JavaFX is a very powerful tool for UI creation once you get used to it.
Yes, you can do that with JavaFX by writing your own CSS files. Learn more at: JavaFX CSS Documentation
It is actually not that hard if you are familiar with CSS.
you can get colorful original GUI with LookAndFeelMetalizer.
For example phoyo was done with it.
I am a C# programmer. I want to learn Java to implement my windows application. But I don't know what IDE and what tools can help me.
Please help me to choose best platform and IDE and other tools.
Edit:
Thank You For Your Helping. And What is Best Ebooks and UserGuids to Learn java.
There are really three big IDE's that people use:
Eclipse
Netbeans
Intellij IDEA (my personal favorite)
The online Java Tutorials are a great place to start learning the language.
Eclipse or NetBeans will be your best bet for an IDE (in my options)
Set up Git for source control
Use Maven to manage your builds (if you're getting that complex)
First, download the java jdk.
http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp
Later, install an IDE. I suggest you to use Eclipse, I like it:
http://www.eclipse.org/
Another one very used is Netbeans:
http://netbeans.org/
Have Fun!
There's a short tutorial along with a great comparison table here. It's a Java tutorial aimed at C# developers.
Java is very close to C# you don't need more than eclipse (Actually I prefer it more than Netbeans) and search for any syntax you want in the Java documentation
JDK
First you need to download Java
development kit(J2SE 6) from Sun's
website
IDEs
eclipse or netbeans
Books
If you are planning to use Swing for
windows application - you may read
sun's tutorial
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/
Or if youa re a serious Java learner
get the Thinking in Java book from
here
http://www.odioworks.com/46-Bruce_Eckel%27s_Free_Electronic_Books.html
By the way, welcome to Java's world :)
Welcome to Java World. You can either use Swing or SWT for windows form like development. Here is a good link to get started with SWT http://www.developer.com/java/other/article.php/3330861/SWT-Programming-with-Eclipse.htm .
On top of what the other user's have already recommended, I would suggest getting familiarized with a J2EE container. It will come in handy in the future. Here is a link on what it is. JBOSS container is free and a pretty good one to use in my opinion. You can download it here.
For Windows app with SWT / AWT gui you should know there are plugins for IDE that help you to create your gui. Check for exemple Matisse for NetBeans.
Once you have Eclipse up and running, you should look at the Visual Editor Project plugin at Eclipse for developing windows applications. Hand-coding all of the SWT stuff is a big pain and hence the plugin will help.
netbensIDE will help u
The title description basically says it all. I'd like to use something that requires a relatively short learning curve since it is my first project and I'd like to spend at least some of it actually writing the code, not just learning how to do it, but also something that has good documentation in a way that some new bleeding edge framework probably wouldn't. Any ideas?
If what you want to do, is actually create a working program with a GUI, and you just want to do that I would recommend looking at the Swing GUI editor in NetBeans, as it is very easy to work with and powerful too.
There is an old demonstration floating around showing how to implement a preference panel like the one in Netscape Navigator (the predecessor to Firefox), but I cannot find it right now.
The Java tutorial trail is here: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/learn/index.html
EDIT: It appears the preference panel demo has been taken offline. You may want to see this demo for NetBeans 6.0 instead: http://www.javalobby.org/eps/matisse-updates/
It's not clear if you mean a desktop or Web GUI.
For a desktop GUI, just use Java's Swing framework. Creating a GUI With JFC/Swing is a starting point for that. Sure it's old but then again so is Swing. You could also try The Java Swing tutorial.
For a Web GUI, start with servlets/JSPs. Try Servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSP) 1.0: A Tutorial.
Swing + MiGLayout ^^
I know you did say you wanted a simple and easy to learn GUI toolkit. #cletus has nailed that answer :)
But if need to look for alternatives and evaluate them before you decide how to write a GUI, check out this list of alternatives to Swing and AWT.
Swing + GroupLayout
I've been posting on these a couple of times.