JWebPane update
June 5, 2009
I was one of the few attendees of the late-night JWebPane BOF (BOF-3992). Artem Ananiev and Alexey Ushakov gave a fantastic demo of a Java web browser based on the JWebPane component (I’m trying to get ahold of a screen shot of this). I did learn that WebKit doesn’t actually provide a rendering engine, but instead provides hooks such that you can be told when and what to paint. This works out well, because JWebPane’s content can be completely painted using Java 2D and Swing.
The team was of course asked when JWebPane would be released (this was my only motivation for attending!). As expected, no date was provided, but they did suggest that it may be available by the end of the year (2009). They also said that an actual date would be put forth within the next couple of months.
One interesting tidbit of information that slipped out was that JWebPane’s release date is being aligned with JavaFX. It’s not clear to exactly why this connection to JavaFX exists, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon.
** Update: screen shots available here. **
Exploding Pixels 
June 5, 2009 at 8:04 pm
What on earth is the holdup with this? I cannot imagine any good reasons for delaying the release of this. I need JWebPane today!
June 6, 2009 at 12:59 am
Could not wait and went with qt jambi for my current project (which has QWebBrowser based on webkit). Works like a charm.
June 5, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Thanks for the info!
June 6, 2009 at 5:35 am
Ken,
Good to meet you at JavaOne.
They are syncing the JWebPane for Swing and JavaFX because it will be used by both. In that sense I guess JWebPane is overloaded to be both the Swing component and the browser tech used by Swing and JavaFX.
— Jonathan
June 6, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Hey Jonathan,
Great to meet you as well! I think your guess is right on.
-Ken
June 6, 2009 at 10:09 am
So JWebPane, JavaFX Authoring Tool and JavaFX 2.0 are going to release by the end of the year. I guess JWebPane will be exposed to JavaFX so web developer would be able to hop on the JavaFX platform as it now in Adobe AIR. Wonder how will Swing integration look like.
June 7, 2009 at 3:35 pm
So is it being delayed because of this sync up with JavaFX or because it isn’t stable yet? Originally we we’re supposed to get at a early release Swing release in Q1 this year? whats the licence here? if it’s GPL shouldn’t we be able to get the source and compiled our own.. yadda yadda..
Seems the rugs been pulled on the JavaFX from Java/Swing angle JFX1.2 removes a lot of the Scenario API and sound slike various Swing JDK7 roadmap items have gone missing) um.. yadda yadda..
June 8, 2009 at 11:45 am
In terms of priority, Swing was supposed to be first, followed by JavaFX (at least as per the original goals of the project). In that sense, it is *really* sad that they did not release a downloadable version for Swing now. Promises, promises, …
June 8, 2009 at 12:01 pm
honestly i’m with Bob on this. JWebPane to my mind might as well be vaporware. Demo’s of the functionality have been around since late last year and still we have to wait with bated breath. QTJambi ftw.
June 8, 2009 at 12:02 pm
If I remember correctly, JWebPane was already demoed last JavaOne’08. SUN has missed a VERY IMPORTANT opportunity with JWebPane. JWebPane summarizes important SUN’s past drawbacks with bad consequences unfortunately: development behind the door only, lack of news, failure to deliver on time important pieces of code…
GUI within Java would have been changed with JWebPane being delivered 1 year ago…
June 8, 2009 at 12:48 pm
You know, what would have happened if they had not announced JWebPane at all so long ago? My guess is that someone else would have done it, now that webkit is what it is. But no one did, because JWebPane “is coming soon”… The good thing that came out of this, for me, is that it forced me to take a taste of jambi.
June 8, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Can you use the QT Jambi webkit component inside a JFrame?
June 9, 2009 at 6:20 pm
I think so, but i haven’t tried it :
http://labs.trolltech.com/page/Projects/QtJambi/QtJambiAwtBridge
June 9, 2009 at 5:41 am
What’s funny is that they scheduled this BOF exactly at the same time of the After Dark Bash, guaranteeing that almost nobody was going to be there :-)
So Ken, you get a golden star for dedication! :-)
June 9, 2009 at 9:40 am
Yeah, that was a rough time slot!
June 10, 2009 at 12:45 pm
You can try “SWT Browser widget” inside you swing application using this project http://djproject.sourceforge.net/ns/index.html
June 10, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work on the Mac.
June 10, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Why not? I think you only need swt.jar for OSX.
http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/eclipse/downloads/drops/S-3.5RC4-200906051444/swt-3.5RC4-cocoa-macosx.zip
June 15, 2009 at 2:55 pm
The SWT browser can only be embedded into an AWT frame on Windows and Linux. SWT is still using Carbon on OSX while AWT uses Cocoa. With the 3.5 release of SWT, where they finish their port to Cocoa, this will likely work on OSX finally.
June 10, 2009 at 5:10 pm
@nva,
It looks like the Webstart demo is only configured to run on Windows (and possibly Linux).
-Ken
June 16, 2009 at 2:16 pm
[…] of the JWebPane Java web browser that he showed in his BOF at JavaOne 2009 (which I talked about here). Below is a screen shot I pulled from Alexey’s latest blog post: Seems like we’re […]
July 16, 2009 at 10:12 pm
[…] – i.e. should it be included with the JDK/JRE, or should it be a separate jar/module? Ken Orr summarises this in a post with a few decent comments. Finally, the last word of course goes to Alexey Ushakov, the guy in […]
October 20, 2009 at 10:30 pm
>>They also said that an actual date would
>>be put forth within the next couple of
>>months.
OK, so today is Oct. 20th -“it has been a couple of months”- , and I’m still not aware of any “release date”. I want to be on the beta release list. How do you get on that list?
Somebody with connections please followup.
November 20, 2009 at 11:06 am
[…] would work to push other new and in the works projects into JDK 7 before its release. These include JWebPane, Java Media Components (JMC) and the Swing Application […]
December 19, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Hmmmmmm
http://kenai.com/projects/webpane/members
August 19, 2010 at 8:11 am
I use JxBrowser library to embed Mozilla browser component into my Swing desktop application. It renders HTML very well and provides rich API.
Maybe it will help someone else :)
http://www.teamdev.com/jxbrowser/
September 18, 2011 at 1:14 pm
I’ve used JxBrowser and another one called … DJ something, while JXBrowser seemed to be the easiest solution it quickly because a nightmare …
Android WebView FTW… swing needs a good update or we’ll all go for C# and dump Java for desktop apps