Comments on: Sexy Swing App – The Bottom Bar

By: Ken

Ken — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:10:17 +0000

Hi Daniel,

I probably won’t be able make the bottom window edges rounded, as that would require installing a window mask, which I’d have to do via JNI. We could put in an enhancement request to Apple, though, requesting a client property to make the rounded corners.

-Ken

By: Daniel Zando

Daniel Zando — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:50:35 +0000

Is there any chance you will update the bar so it will be slightly rounded? Thanks for the awesome work, though!

By: Ken

Ken — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:41:51 +0000

Good catches Felix! Those were some copy and paste errors. I’ve updated the entry.

-Ken

By: Felix

Felix — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:06:46 +0000

Just some other things:
The fields OS_X_BOTTOM_BAR_BORDER_HIGHLIGHT_COLOR and OS_X_UNIFIED_TOOLBAR_FOCUSED_BOTTOM_COLOR are duplicate. Works though when you comment them out.
And the constructor is named BottomBarGradientPanel, but the class itself BottomBarPanel.
Additionally, the class somehow may not be “static” (I don’t know what that would do and why it’s not allowed).

When I resolve all that, it gives a window a cool bottom panel. Looks great!

:-),
Felix

By: Ken

Ken — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:55:22 +0000

Right…but in the case of a work-around, I’d put the code wherever was easiest in hopes that a supported solution would be introduced.

By: Mikael Grev

Mikael Grev — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:20:42 +0000

The roundness of the status bar is not the responsibility of the status bar itself, it is the responsibility of the windowing system, look&feel or similar.

By: Ken

Ken — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:18:30 +0000

Thanks Daniel! It kills me to see the square corners at the bottom of the “textured” window in Java.

I’ve thought about trying to implement the rounded corners using a shaped window, but thus far it’s fallen into the too much effort bucket. If I get sufficiently motivated to tackle this issue, I’ll be sure to post about it here.

I’ll also submit an enhancement request to Apple asking for a client property to draw the rounded corners in order to spare us from this hackery.

-Ken

By: Daniel Spiewak

Daniel Spiewak — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:12:42 +0000

Nice work! The one thing this doesn’t implement from the HIG is that the corners should be slightly rounded. This is nasty since it requires a transparent window, but you can probably fake the effect (since it’s such a tiny round anyway) by using a gradient color rather than a hard stroke, thus filling the space from the rounding to the actual corner and subtly tricking the eye. It won’t pass any sort of really close examination, but it might fool the eye in passing.