Mac Widgets for Java – 0.9.4
February 15, 2009
I’ve just released Mac Widgets for Java 0.9.4. The major additions in this release are HUD style controls and the Dark Source List. Also, Source List colors can be fully customized via the new SourceListColorScheme interface.
You’ll find the full list of enhancements and fixes here, or you can browse the API here. Also, you can see examples that use these new widgets here.
Exploding Pixels 
February 15, 2009 at 7:34 pm
[…] Orr has announced the release of Max Widgets for Java 0.9.4. You can check out the full list of enhancements and fixes, or just browse the API. Also, you can […]
February 15, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Hey Ken – looks great! gonna try this out as soon as I have a chance…
have you had a chance to post your lib to a public maven repository?
February 15, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Hi Hendrik,
I haven’t added Mac Widgets for Java to Maven yet, but I promise it’s on my to-do list!
-Ken
February 16, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Really cool …
February 16, 2009 at 11:02 pm
I did some testing nice stuff!
BTW: u should update the examples from the wiki(googlecode) or are there other (up-to-date) examples?
February 16, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Hi JavaNovice,
Which examples did you find out of date?
-Ken
February 18, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Very nice stuff.
Few constructive remarks:
1. few things rely on MACOS only features.
search button feature, Unified toolbar / Bottom bar cannot be used with default JButton – it must have MACOS button which does not exist on other paltforms.
2. Rounded corners rendering with anti aliasing (HUD button) look bad on lighter background. The dark background hides the somewhat messy edges.
– Avital
February 18, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Hi Avital,
Re. 1: I’ll probably eventually add UI delegates that render buttons in the Mac style across platforms.
Re. 2: The HUD style controls are intended to only be used in conjunction with the HUDWindow. Do you have a use case for something different?
-Ken
February 19, 2009 at 9:54 am
Re. Re. 2: I Kinda liked the button looks. So I thought about using it in a Form. The dark background does not suit our type of applications (Finance).
Someone commented about it here:
http://code.google.com/p/macwidgets/issues/detail?id=49
-Avital
February 19, 2009 at 10:22 am
Hi,
I’ve just updated to 0.9.4 to try to fix the bug with rendering Unified Toolbars under Mac OS X JDK 6 but it hasn’t fixed it. It’s probably something I’m doing wrong but I know that it has installed properly because some of the other bugs from 0.9.3 are fixed e.g. Unified Toolbar icons size, iTunes table size.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks, James.
February 19, 2009 at 1:13 pm
@Avital,
OK…I’ll take that into consideration. I’ll also take a quick look into why that rendering looks a little off.
-Ken
February 19, 2009 at 1:31 pm
@James,
Try running the com.explodingpixels.macwidgets.DUnifiedToolbar demo – does that look correct?
-Ken
February 22, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Yes it does but i forgot to say I am in fact using a PreferencesTabBar not a Unified Toolbar and the DPreferencesTabBar demo doesn’t render correctly.
-James
February 22, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Ahh…OK. Could you create an issue for that here, and include a screen shot?
Thanks,
-Ken
February 22, 2009 at 7:30 pm
I’ve posted it as an issue.
-James
February 23, 2009 at 9:57 am
Hello Ken
I’m an avid reader of this blog. Really nice things and I can’t wait for the opportunity to use them in my programming :-)
Regarding your answer to Avital:
“Re. 1: I’ll probably eventually add UI delegates that render buttons in the Mac style across platforms.”
This would be great. I’m for example programming for all platforms but in my opinion the Mac look is the best there is. Mac style buttons would be awesome :-)
Thanks again for your great work!
Best regards, Gath
February 23, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Hi Gath,
Thank for the feedback! The more requests I get for standard Mac style UI delegates, the higher up my priority list it will go.
-Ken
March 3, 2009 at 4:31 am
I’ve been delving into the guts of your HudComboBoxUI and related classes to figure out if it’s possible to mesh it up with a JComboBox that uses a subclass of ListCellRenderer. Right now it’s not looking too good. I may have to subclass HudComboBoxUI, override the createPopup method, and then write my own ComboPopup.
A question I have is… why did you decide to go with using JMenuItem elements in your EPComboPopup class?
March 3, 2009 at 1:33 pm
I used a JMenuItem because I wanted to get the gradient selection for free. By default, ComboPopup wants to be backed by a JList. The selected item in a JList renders differently than a selected JMenuItem (flat blue color vs. gradient blue).
I may end up changing this implementation back to using a JList and do the gradient painting myself, but I’m not sure yet.
What is it you need to render in the HudComboBox?
-Ken
March 3, 2009 at 8:21 pm
In some data mapping applications, I am using JComboBoxes to allow the user to from a list of select pre-set colors and from a list of colorbars. The color menus just have small color squares next to the color names. The colorbar menus actually show a rectangular bar with the individual color patterns.
You’ve seen sample screenshots from one of these applications, although I don’t recall how visible any of these comboboxes might have been in them
March 3, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Boy that was scrambled. It should have started…
“In some data mapping applications, I am using JComboBoxes to allow the user to select from a list of pre-set colors and from a list of colorbars.”
March 3, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Makes sense. Would you mind adding your use case to this issue. I’ll have to think about the best way to make this all fit together. If I implement my own ListCellRenderer, then I can go back to using a standard JList. I would then need to give you a way to hook into the painting process.
March 10, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Hi,
I posted a issue about the PreferencesTabBar on google code a while ago and was wandering how the progress on this bug was going and whether you need any more screenshots etc.
Thanks
– James
March 11, 2009 at 11:35 am
Hi James,
I have a fix for you. I’ll attach an updated jar file to the Google Code issue.
-Ken
April 30, 2009 at 9:49 am
Love the ability to customise the colour scheme – good work!