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I am a complete beginner in java. Although i have studied a lot of literature on the language (well sort of), this is my first real project.
I was basically planning to make a simple clock widget and later plan to build Gui s. Until now, i had learnt in swing. But then i found on this site that Swing is kinda outdated
( ref : Java GUI frameworks. What to choose? Swing, SWT, AWT, SwingX, JGoodies, JavaFX, Apache Pivot?).
What i needed was some good libraries in java to assist me in this process ( the clock widget and subsequently more complex gui). So i thought of getting libraries from jgoodies, the free ones.
And now i am utterly confused and messed up on what to do and dont understand anything. And of course i dont need books in design patterns etc etc. Just java references and some tutorials on gui using java and jgoodies to get me started. And i cant find them anywhere.
So please point me in right direction.
Reading background (Head First java, java the complete ref and data structures and algo)
(Suggest others if not sufficient)
AWT has effectively been replaced by Swing.
SWT is a different framework, which provides greater native interaction with the OS
JavaFX is the new player on the block, while some consider it a replacement for Swing, it's primary intention was to display Flash or act as an alternative to it.
SwingX and JGoodies are Swing based libraries.
Swing and SWT have begin around for quite some time, some might consider them to be "old", but what it does mean is there is a body of knowledge surrounding the frameworks, as well as a number libraries designed to support and extend them
JavaFX is new player on the market and has yet to build the same knowledge and support base.
If I was you. I would pay attention to Swing (personally) as it is going to provide you with the best ground base of experienced developers and support to help you on your way.
Once you become more comfortable, you could explore SWT, JavaFX and other toolkits and frameworks.
I would start with Creating a GUI with Swing, Performing Custom Painting and 2D Graphics.
My (personally) feeling is to build an understanding of the base library, try and learn it's strengths and weakness. This will help you understand when to use such libraries as SwingX and JGoodies - IMHO
What i needed was some good libraries in java to assist me in this process ( the clock widget and subsequently more complex gui). So i thought of getting libraries from jgoodies, the free ones.
Probably you don't need libraries as much as you think you do. Learn stuff from first principles and you will learn it better.
All the major Java GUI frameworks are quite high level and functional already. When you are first starting out, I think you should skip 3rd party libraries and see how far you get with what is provided in the base JRE and the framework of your choice. There is more than enough to learn with just the basic frameworks, the java language and the JRE. If you try to add in other frameworks too early, you will end up overloaded, confused and less productive. Plus the increased abstraction of the libraries may prevent you from learning some of the important underlying principles well enough.
Once you get a bit more experience in building things, then you will have a much better idea where the gaps in the frameworks are for your application and you can add in 3rd party libraries at that time.
planning to make a simple clock widget
If you get stuck, here is code for a JavaFX clock: How to draw a clock with JavaFX 2? or a similar implementation in Swing.
Note that creating a clock is quite a bit different than creating a traditional form based GUI that makes use of a library of predefined controls - but any of the major Java GUI frameworks can handle both tasks.
Don't make a clock your first GUI programming task, do something easier. Then try to create a clock later.
using swing for precise layout is really a difficult job
There are interactive graphical layout managers for Swing and other frameworks (e.g. the excellent SceneBuilder for JavaFX) which make this easier.
However, when first starting, it's probably worth hand coding stuff rather than letting a tool manage the layout for you (for example when learning JavaFX, stick with just the Java API and don't use FXML until you are completely comfortable with the Java API). You will learn the ins and outs of layout management and other things better that way. Sure you will make some mistakes and there will be a bit of frustration, but things will become clear in time with some persistence. And you may eventually end up deciding that you prefer hand-coding rather than using a graphical tool anyway.
The tricky part is usually creating quality, dynamically resizable GUIs that look good at different resolutions and window sizes - and that is generally tricky for beginners no matter what GUI toolkit is used.
The layout managers in JavaFX are very similar to the basic layout managers in Swing - so layout-wise there is little difference between the two frameworks.
The retained mode Scene Graph in JavaFX may be a bit easier to work with than the direct mode painting of Swing, but I guess that is not quite layout related.
Introspection tools, such as ScenicView for JavaFX, ease debugging layouts at runtime. Think of things like ScenicView as something similar to Firebug for HTML (e.g. your essential layout debugging companion).
And now i am utterly confused and messed up on what to do and dont understand anything.
You understand more than you think you do or you wouldn't have known enough to ask this question.
What you should do (IMO) is just pick a Java GUI framework (any framework - they are all passable), pick a decent starting task (something that seems mind-numbingly simple - even simpler than a clock) and start coding. Make everything task related; very small tasks with clear end-goals. Write a decent amount of code and always go back and revise your code and it's output to try to make it the very best it can be - don't settle for good enough.
Try painting rainbows and happy faces - when you code that up and see it on the screen, you will feel good about yourself :-)
If you need a refresher on the Java language, follow the Oracle Learning the Java Language trail. That trail is the way I learnt Java many years ago. It has been maintained over the years so that it is still a great resource and useful today.
If you choose Swing, follow the starting links from MadProgrammer.
If you choose JavaFX, follow the JavaFX tutorials and the Ensemble sample app but be aware that some of the JavaFX tutorials are targeted to more experienced programmers.
Related
This sounds like a useless question at the first glance, but I need to give my colleagues some valid arguments about the history of JavaFX. I know about FXML and that Swing won't get any new features in the future, this already speaks for it self in the IT-world.
But apart from that... WHY did they start from scratch instead of adapting Swing to the new requirements?
JavaFX is easier and it supports XML layouts, but this doesn't sound to me like it is necessary to build a completely new framework.
I read THIS blog and some other sources on the topic and I can't really answer this question. The points I read are mostly minors as far as I can guess.
Simply put, Swing, being a 15+ year old architecture, just doesn't work with something like JavaFX. The pipeline and architecture is not there. If they tried to layer FX on top of Swing, they would either break Swing, or hinder FX, or both.
We know a lot more today than we did then as to what a GUI framework needs to do to be better performant, along with what modern developers expect from a GUI framework.
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I have a very big program that is currently using SWT. The program can be run on both Windows, Mac and Linux, and it is a big desktop application with many elements.
Now SWT being somewhat old I would like to switch to either Swing or JavaFX. And I would like to hear your thoughts on three things.
My main concern is what will be better for a desktop GUI application? (I looked online and a lot of people suggest that JavaFX is just as good as Swing, but I didn't see many valid arguments except simple opinion flame wars). It has to work on both Windows, Mac and some popular Linux distributions.
What will be cleaner and easier to maintain?
and what will be faster to build from scratch?
I am using MVC methology in my application, if that is of any help.
What will be cleaner and easier to maintain?
All things being equal, probably JavaFX - the API is much more consistent across components. However, this depends much more on how the code is written rather than what library is used to write it.
And what will be faster to build from scratch?
Highly dependent on what you're building. Swing has more components around for it (3rd party as well as built in) and not all of them have made their way to the newer JavaFX platform yet, so there may be a certain amount of re-inventing the wheel if you need something a bit custom. On the other hand, if you want to do transitions / animations / video stuff then this is orders of magnitude easier in FX.
One other thing to bear in mind is (perhaps) look and feel. If you absolutely must have the default system look and feel, then JavaFX (at present) can't provide this. Not a big must have for me (I prefer the default FX look anyway) but I'm aware some policies mandate a restriction to system styles.
Personally, I see JavaFX as the "up and coming" UI library that's not quite there yet (but more than usable), and Swing as the borderline-legacy UI library that's fully featured and supported for the moment, but probably won't be so much in the years to come (and therefore chances are FX will overtake it at some point.)
As stated by Oracle, JavaFX is the next step in their Java based rich client strategy.
Accordingly, this is what I recommend for your situation:
What would be easier and cleaner to maintain
JavaFX has introduced several improvements over Swing, such as, possibility to markup UIs with FXML, and theming with CSS. It has great potential to write a modular, clean & maintainable code.
What would be faster to build from scratch
This is highly dependent on your skills and the tools you use.
For swing, various IDEs offer tools for rapid development. The best I personally found is the GUI builder in NetBeans.
JavaFX has support from various IDEs as well, though not as mature as the support Swing has at the moment. However, its support for markup in FXML & CSS make GUI development on JavaFX intuitive.
MVC Pattern Support
JavaFX is very friendly with MVC pattern, and you can cleanly separate your work as: presentation (FXML, CSS), models(Java, domain objects) and logic(Java).
IMHO, the MVC support in Swing isn't very appealing. The flow you'll see across various components lacks consistency.
For more info, please take a look these FAQ post by Oracle regarding JavaFX here.
JavaFX Frequently Asked Questions
No one has mentioned it, but JavaFX does not compile or run on certain architectures deemed "servers" by Oracle (e.g. Solaris), because of the missing "jfxrt.jar" support. Stick with SWT, until further notice.
I don't think there's any one right answer to this question, but my advice would be to stick with SWT unless you are encountering severe limitations that require such a massive overhaul.
Also, SWT is actually newer and more actively maintained than Swing. (It was originally developed as a replacement for Swing using native components).
On older notebooks with integrated video Swing app starts and works much faster than JavaFX app. As for development, I'd recommend switch to Scala - comparable Scala Swing app contains 2..3 times less code than Java.
As for Swing vs SWT: Netbeans GUI considerably faster than Eclipse...
I'd look around to find some (3rd party?) components that do what you want. I've had to create custom Swing components for an agenda view where you can book multiple resources, as well as an Excel-like grid that works well with keyboard navigation and so on. I had a terrible time getting them to work nicely because I needed to delve into many of Swing's many intricacies whenever I came upon a problem. Mouse and focus behaviour and a lot of other things can be very difficult to get right, especially for a casual Swing user. I would hope that JavaFX is a bit more future-orientated and smooth out of the box.
I am so-so with Swing and just starting to learn JavaFX. I went over a few answers on SO with regards to which one to use and I still can not make up my mind.
Is it possible to get the best of both the worlds ??
Like, use JavaFX with I want to give some visually appealing graphics and add some Swing to JavaFX when I want to ?
You can use JavaFX in Swing applications via the JFXPanel control. See the SwingInterOp sample. You can also utilize JavaFX from inside sophisticated Swing based platforms such as NetBeans RCP.
A current limitation of JavaFX/Swing integration is that you can embed JavaFX components in a Swing application, but not Swing components in a JavaFX application. RT-12100 Swing in JavaFX embedding support is currently scheduled for Java 8.
If you have a green field new application to develop, I'd advise choosing one technology or the other and sticking with that or at least keeping the integration points localized and few and far between. Both frameworks are large and take time to learn, plus you will avoid any integration headaches such as needing to take care that Swing processing is done on the Swing Event Dispatch thread and JavaFX processing is done on the JavaFX Application Thread.
JavaFX also integrates with SWT and that integration is currently simpler than the JavaFX/Swing integration (because there is only a single GUI thread to worry about).
Here is a screenshot of JavaFX/Swing interop sample from Oracle:
I went over a few answers on SO with regards to which one to use and I still can not make up my mind.
Rather than doing that, I'd advise picking a small application and implementing it from scratch in Swing and JavaFX and seeing which you prefer. It's time better spent as there is no substitute for hands on experience - then, if you still have questions (hopefully more specific and targeted), come back to StackOverflow to research or ask them.
It depends on your motivation for learning them. If you're looking primarily to boost your CV in the near future and become attractive to businesses, then (for the moment at least) there's many more applications out there written in Swing than JavaFX, purely because the latter is a much newer toolkit.
However, if you're thinking more long term or just want the best tool for the job, personally I find JavaFX to offer more flexibility, be much easier to code in an aesthetically pleasing way, and easier to learn as well (the API behind it is just much nicer.) The only thing against it at the moment is that there's some features that I'd really like to be included, but aren't yet (again, naturally this is what you get by going for the newer toolkit.)
I'd also advise against mixing the two. I'm currently involved in two projects using JavaFX, one entirely JavaFX based and the other a mixture of FX and swing. The latter is much more fiddly to maintain, primarily because of the difference in dispatch threading.
As a previous poster stated, you can use JavaFX in Swing applications now. But since Oracle has declared that JavaFX is the future of the desktop for Java, why not just learn it. I've tried to keep current on both and it's a chore. I'm planning on focusing on JavaFX exclusively in the future -- less chance of confusing myself.
That said, JavaFX still doesn't seem to be a full-fledged member of the JDK, especially if used in conjunction with other languages, like Clojure for example. Depending on the JavaFX version, there are different machinations to go through to pull it into build tools. But that situation is getting better with each release.
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I would like if there is some project developed in Java to learn Swing best practices. I mean an open source project hosted on the Internet through SVN or similar. I've been reading some questions in Stackoverflow about this topic but I would see some projects. Thanks.
The way I learned Swing best practices was reading the Swing source code in the JDK and practice. Follow Sun's practices and you'll be on the right path.
Read the implementations of JTable, JTree, JScrollPane, the various LookAndFeels, SwingWorker, SwingUtilities. Their event handling and MVC patterns are extremely complex but very readable, maintainable, and extensible. Essentailly, every time you use a component, go read the source code and understand what and why they do it. Eventually, you'll start doing the same thing.
And most importantly, code. Write some large programs, and you'll start seeing things that don't seem right or optimal. Come on to Stack and find out what you're doing wrong or could do better. Write something else, and do the same.
That said, the following projects have (or probably have) good code:
SwingX - The maintainers of SwingX were Sun/ex-Sun people, and I've always thought of it as unofficial incubator for future Swing features.
Squirrel (A JDBC client) - I haven't actually looked at their source, but I've used the program for years and it doesn't show any of the common flaws in badly written Swing programs. With how powerful it is, and how well it works, I would put money that's its extremely well written.
InfoNode (A powerful docking framework) - I've gone through quite a bit of their code, and its pretty solid.
JFreeChart (A powerful charting library) - Not the greatest code, but much better than average, especially taking into account its an old project that was never really intended to do everything people are using it for. That said, it is very extensible, and I've never had a problem molding it to my needs (which are much, much more than its original intentions).
GlazedLists (A highly performant event-based list library) - Not exactly Swing, but it's event handling is similar to Swing. They also have implementations of Swing models and some custom components that are extremely fast.
JIDE Common Layer: A massive collection of custom components that serves as the basis for their commercial components. I haven't gone through their code, but their components are beautiful, and since their primary focus is commercial Swing components, once again, I'd put money that their code is solid.
I found it very interesting to see a professional-quality application written in Swing, such as IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition. Now that it's open-sourced, you can check out the code and start digging in. Be forewarned though, there are no comments!
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I write applications in Java, and I'm looking for ways to speedup GUI programming. Binding frameworks help, but the particular application I'm working on now wouldn't benefit too much from that (it doesn't display a lot of data, just a lot of ways to manipulate the data). I feel like I spend way too much time writing boiler-plate GUI code, like adding action listeners, laying out components, etc. While I'm not a C# developer, I've heard XAML works very well and have seen JAXX, which appears to be similar to XAML. I'm also looking at the Groovy Swing Builder. It just seems like there are so many options, maybe even too many.
Can anyone share their thoughts on alternatives to hand writing simple Java UI code?
Also, I'd be interested in discussing how to migrate existing Java Swing code to use some of these options.
thanks,
Jeff
How about using MiGLayout?
It is extremely simple to learn and use.
I strongly recommend it to you. In my last project, it helped me to reduce much time to implement lots of GUI.
Layouts:
For layouts, I have abandoned the JDK Layout Managers in favor of the JGoodies Forms tool. I find it much more effective. It reads at a higher level, and reduces significantly the amount of code related to layouts.
I recommend using Clojure
It allows you to write Java GUIs quickly without the boilerplate.
Griffon is a Groovy framework for creating Java desktop applications. Admittedly, if you don't already know Groovy, you'll need to learn (some parts of) a new language to use it effectively, but the enhanced productivity is worth the effort in my opinion.
You should definitely use an IDE with GUI builder.
IntelliJ IDEA and NetBeans have very good GUI builders, they allow you to automatically bind objects and would reduce tremendously the amount of effort needed to create a GUI as opposed of doing it completely by hand.
I agree with others that tying down to NetBeans seems dangerous - especially when working with other developers. I've used the (commercial) Swing Designer (by "instantiations") plugin for Eclipse with quite a lot of success - the thing I like about it is that it round-trips, generating code that you are free to alter by hand. Not perfect, but a good time-saver.
But the biggest difference in my Swing programming came with the discovery of better layout managers. I went from FormLayout (good), to TableLayout (better), but now I don't use anything but MiGLayout (incredible).
You can try ZK(the best open source Java framework for building enterprise web and mobile apps).
http://www.zkoss.org/
I'm no expert in GUI programming, but have you tried using NetBeans as a platform for your app?