How can I create a frame which includes animation? - java

I have a frame and I want to show some white sphere in the different location in my frame,I have researched a lot but I found some codes for using applets but i don't want to use applets.
please help me with some code or references.
Thanks.

Sun has published a large list of Java 2D examples, many of which include animation. You should be able to copy the techniques used there. Take a look!
Note: "Java 2D" sounds like some API that you'd need to download a new library for. This is not the case: Java 2D is part of the "normal" JDK/JRE libraries.
Another note: There's not too much difference between an Applet showing graphics and a desktop application. To convert a Swing Applet to a desktop application, most of the effort is replacing JApplet with JFrame, and moving the applet's init code into the JFrame's constructor. So if you see example code for applets, don't throw it out the window as it can still be useful to you.

You may also like this Java 2D games tutorial that discusses several animation techniques.

Related

Is there a way to embed TightVNC Java Viewer without all those buttons?

I am playing with the TightVNC viewer for Java and can't find the way to embed the VNC screen (Viewer) into my JFrame window. I do not want a separate window. In fact I do not want any of those (useful, but sometimes not required) buttons.
Simply put, I want to have a JFrame with VNC viewer taking the whole window, and all other stuff from the TightVNC viewer hidden.
Any ideas how to achieve this will be greatly appreciated.
TigerVNC and TightVNC are almost the same (1st depends on the 2nd), but TigerVNC is organized a bit different. Because I don't think it would add up explaining everything for TightVNC in detail I'd suggest using TigerVNC instead, if it is possible license-wise ... maybe your problem doesn't exist there. The steps are the same (trace through the code or something... to find the places where the viewport is assembled) for all Java GUI applications, just the classes have other names.

JavaFX and antialias

I am in the process of porting some graphics rendering from java/Android to standard java.
The first thing that I am faced with is - which graphics api to use, Graphics2D or JavaFX.
It was proposed by assylias in my previous question "Porting graphics drawing from android to standard java", that I use JavaFX.
I have seen that this has the advantage of taking doubles and floats as parameters for drawing, as with Android.
However, I have not been able to find anything which confirms that the drawing is antialiased, or that antialiasing can be turned on.
My objective is to generate a high quality image which will be directly saved to disk and not displayed in the application. It will be displayed in another context and not printed.
I need to be drawing text, paths, beziers, lines, ellipses and rectangles.
Is it worth my while digging into JavaFX or do I have no choice but to go with Graphics2D ?
Many (if not all) of the objects that are drawn in JavaFX applications already have antialiasing effect. This is visible to the naked eye. Try to write two identical applications, one in JavaFX, and another in Swing (without antialiasing effect of Graphics and RenderingHints object). The difference is clear, especially when drawing geometric shapes and text. Here you can find some comparisons between Swing and JavaFX, and here you can get to know better the JavaFX 2.X (read the subject "Graphics System" and "Media and Images").
Personally, I would prefer to use JavaFX technology. I previously used a lot Swing. Each of my applications had to be made in Swing. However, after seeing the practicality of JavaFX, its maintainability, its elegance and productivity, I did not think twice. Even if you just want to draw simple things, JavaFX seems to have a much better performance. If I'm not mistaken, JavaFX was developed taking into account the use of video hardware on your platform, and was also inspired by the famous game engines available for Java users, which are made to work with high processing visual effect, screen updates, and among many other things.
For you marvel a bit with the technology and effort that was put, I beg you, visit this address. Look for the download of a JavaFX program named Ensemble. You will find where is written "JDK 7 and JavaFX Demos and Samples". click download and use the demo program Ensemble.
For information on drawing text, geometric shapes and stuff, see the following links:
http://java.dzone.com/articles/javafx-21-beta-improved-font
http://fxexperience.com/2012/01/lcd-text-support-in-javafx-2-1-developer-preview/ (An alternative from the previous link)
http://docs.oracle.com/javafx/2/text/jfxpub-text.htm (Look for "Setting LCD Text Support" and also, with the feature of applying effects to text and various things of JavaFX, you can still improve the visualization of what is shown to the user.)
http://docs.oracle.com/javafx/2/api/javafx/scene/shape/Shape.html#smoothProperty (The "shapes part")
Would you like an opinion of a colleague? Adopt JavaFX in its version 2.X or higher (do not use the JavaFX 1.X). Over time this type of technology will mature. Much still come ahead. The next update of JavaFX, we will have many nice features. And notice that JavaFX is still in its version 2.X. Probably in the near future Swing library will be left out, as happened with the AWT. You better start now studying JavaFX, rather than only in the future you go familiarizing yourself. The market is there.
If you still have some questions, please come back and ask. We'll be here. :)
Good luck.

Making label creators in Java

I want to create a tool in java that can be used to create labels for consumer products. This is similar to CD label creators. What are the techniques available for doing this and guide me in a good direction so that i can walk through perfectly. If you just give me some tips i will start coding on it.
Here are some tutorials that should get you started, using AWT Print and Graphics2D:
Swing Tutorial - High-Quality Java Printing
Printing - Java Tutorials by Sun/Oracle
Using the 2D graphics API means you'll be able to render the result on-screen as well as print it. This will be significantly easier if you already know something about AWT or Swing.

Understanding Java GUI development, managing and setting JComponents

I wanted to have a discussion on Java GUIs, right now, I'm still in school and I've done light gui development for class.(We briefly covered it.)
Plain and simple, I couldn't do anything I want, I wanted to build a nice clean layout but everything looked off and worse when you maximize it. JButton were huge when put inside a GridLayout, or they spanned the whole row, when I clearly specified the size of the button and etc. It's been one headache after another with Java gui development.
With Microsoft WPF/XAML UI development is more straightforward, it felt like HTML/CSS. Setting the width, height, margin, and padding is great, knowing where my components are going to be puts the mind at ease. And you can even design a custom Look and Feel.
I wanted to know if do you guys have any tips and resources for someone starting Java GUI development. And the one thing I don't get is launch new items with a JFrame, i.e a game.
At Launch your directed to a panel with 4 buttons.
Play Game - Takes you to a new panel to play the game.
Lobby - Takes you to a chat like interface
and etc
Should these be panels? Or more JFrames, like when a user click a button I launch the Play Game JFrame then close the menu JFrame. I really have no ideas with Java guis.
Make sure you understand and are using the appropriate layout managers. This Swing tutorial is very useful for learning how each works: http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/visual.html
Also realize that you can layer layouts by putting on panel inside another. This is sometimes necessary to achieve a desired effect while keeping things simple.
For your last question, buttons can just be added to a panel that can bee adding to additional panels before a frame.
First off take a look at Mig Layout. This is a real full featured layout manager and currently is the best one available. If for some reason you can't use external dependencies then you will want to look at GridBagLayout. GridBagLayout will be powerful enough to do everything you need, but it is not as easy to use as something like Mig Layout.
In 99% of the applications you will build you will have a single JFrame and just transition the JPanels to show the different screens.
First off, one of my rules of thumb when building UI panels is to never set directly any location or size.
Then, a second rule is to never set any preferred, minimum or maximum size directly in pixels (thus will bite you when you change from one monitor to another one, with higher or lower DPI resolution). Take a look at this post on my blog, quite old but still useful today.
Thirdly, I try to avoid embedding panels into panels because it leads to components alignment problems and inconsistent component sizes.
Finally, I try to use DesignGridLayout for most of my forms, and sometimes revert to GridBagLayout if the UI layout is too complex (but a complex UI layout may also be a sign of poor UI design).
As a general comment about how to build UI applications (with any UI toolkit in general, but with Swing in particular), there are several recommendations that exist out there, but it is hard to find concrete implementations, you have to read a lot about these, and then try to find the way that works best for you.
Yes, welcome. Compared to HTML /Javascript/CSS you can get nothing like the sophistication and polish for the equivalent level of time spent learning.
(I haven't sourced all the files for you for anything here - google and start looking up).
Swing, in my experience definitely feels like I read 10 million documents, played with some demos, and spend three or four months nightly for 2-3 hours, and you have some idea of how some of the api's work, and then have no idea why some don't. Its great. You want something to work and then implement that, and proceed to f*ck up the rest of your gui.
Java swing, in my opinion, is desperately crying for an open source JQuery type plugin library that will animate your JComponents and render them in a way that you like. Its a definite second class citizen on the desktop, and especially now that CSS / HTML browser rendering sophistication has improved over the last few years.
The nimbus look and feel style is an improvement definitely in the right direction.
You could also move over to JavaFx. Good luck. Apparently its quite nice. I haven't yet had the time or patience.
If you are allowed to use thirdparty library : try JAXX as an option. The idea was to create a css type implementation, where styling elements are separated into a file that can be quickly configured and tested.
Read here for good introduction: today.java.net/pub/a/today/2006/03/30/introducing-jaxx.html
JavaCSS is found in the JAXX project. JAXX is a xml format style implementation of the swing gui interface. You write an xml document, and a css style document, and are able to bind the inputs and outputs of the GUI to your java implementation engine. The css style document allows for rapid sophisticated gui development. Using the jaxx jar engine, the xml code is converted into java code that runs as rapidly as if deployed in a .java class file.
The project has been continued by a French group of programmers and is now to be found here: http://www.nuiton.org/projects/jaxx/files
The demo is at least pretty and most things seem to work.
The latest release is JAXX 2.4.2. The latest update was May or June 2011. Whilst in French, the documentation is still comprehensible in English. Just translate.
The original ethan nicholas files of jaxx were last updated on 17-07-2009
http://sourceforge.net/projects/jaxx/
Please note: www.jaxxframework.org/wiki/Main_Page is a dead link, the site is discontinued. instead a mirror has been made and can be found at: buix.labs.libre-entreprise.org/original-jaxx/www.jaxxframework.org/wiki/Main_Page.html
This documentation is essential to understand the meaning and purpose of jaxx and its use.
If you are patient, have lots of time, and are interested, also look at the timing framework by Chet Haase, to animate your components, it is possible to create sophisticated effects. It requires learning curve and time.
Or pay to get your gui components handled by a professional third party library? (Um, the obvious answer, no-one who has spent the time and effort to learn to create a pretty gui is just gonna hand that over).
So spend three years learning and then ask for moola from others?
Another idea - I am very into exploring but it looks like it might be a nightmare to implement, despite everyone saying its so easy, get an open source webbrowser html / csss renderer embedded, and design your gui on that, using CSS / JQuery / HTML.
But it looks like you have to first compile the web browser (mozilla) from source, and then wrap that in another program (e.g. JRex) and then put the whole thing in a mini- client server like Jetty, just to have a front end implementation that you halfway like.
And that is only if the browser is actually is as compliant with the CSS2 standard and HTML4. Forget about HTML5. That is for the future.
Okay, I am grumpy today, but I don't think the gripes are completely unjustified.

Design a GUI for a J2ME app

How do I create a J2ME app for cellphones with a GUI similar to the menus you see in Java games? I've tried MIDlets with Netbeans but they only show you one GUI element at a time. (textbox, choice, login, etc)
And which Java IDE would you typically design these GUIs in? Netbeans or Eclipse? and is IntelliJ IDEA usable for this aswell?
Do I have to write/get a library that draws GUI controls to screen via bitmap functions .. and keeps track of the keys pressed for focus?
Try to use LWUIT - nice UI toolkit for j2me:
https://lwuit.dev.java.net/
http://lwuit.blogspot.com/
You can also use minime: http://code.google.com/p/minime/
It's an open source GUI library for j2me. miniME works on canvas level (lowest level in j2me) to draw every control so your UI will look exactly the same whatever the handset it'll be running on. Other advantage are:
- miniME uses its own event loop to manage user controlled event (botton pressed, softbar, ..), so you Application will "behave" the same whatever the handset.
- miniME support the concept of Views and stack of view, in order to make navigation between different view/screens very easy.
Here is an example: A View is what you have on the screen at a given moment (for example the main menu screen), then to go to a sub menu, you create a new view, and by calling a simple API, you push it in the stack of Views. The previous view (the main menu) is still existing, but inactive. When the sub menu view complete his work (for example, user press back, or do a selection), you can just go back to the previous view by calling a pop api.
Your question is a bit vague to give a specific aswer, but you might want to check out LWUIT or Polish, you can develop both with either Eclipse or Netbeans.
As far as designing GUIs go, neither IDE will help from a visual perspective. J2ME UI development is all done in code, beyond creating any initial graphics in a proper graphics editor you don't get to see your output until you test.
Read up on the LCDUI package documentation which explains how the UI classes work and the differences between the 'High-level' and 'low-level' APIs.
I can't comment on which IDE to use - but I do know that to create custom UI (like the ones you see in J2ME games), you have to explicitly draw the GUI controls.
Beware that you may need to customize the GUI depending on the target phones. You have to cater for different screen sizes, key pad configurations, default theme etc. This would probably mean that you need different builds for things like different screen sizes which would drive up your Java Verified certification costs (if you need it).
You may be able to find a set of nice looking UI controls that you can buy online and use (try J2ME Polish). The easy way out of course, is to use default J2ME controls :)
Links to many j2me GUI libraries: link1, link2
I know that kuix is not bad and free - watch demo.
But i prefer to make my own gui elements - this is much more flexible (but takes some time).
As for IDE - you may want to make some kind of gui-editor tool, construct interface in it, save result to some file, and read it from your app.
It's way too cumbersome to write your own GUI, especially since there are so many available these days. If you're familiar with desktop development in VB.Net and C#, you might find "J2ME GUI" easy to use. You can download it from http://www.garcer.com/. It has a similar feel and makes it easy to learn. This is the kind of GUI that I expected to come standard with MIDP2 when I started mobile development. Would have solved a lot of issues.
If you are familiar with web stuffs then you can use KUIX (kalmeo.org/home/index) framework having xml and css supports. In place of It you can use also Polish framework (www.j2mepolish.org) it's also uses the xml in easy way rather than kalmeo kuix framework.

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