Gregg Bolinger - opinion tag

This Is What Ticks Me Off With Sun and Swing

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:41:00 GMT

So I have been spending most of my evening trying to get drag and drop from a JTree to a JList to work with Java6's alleged "simpler D&D support". Simple is relative. I need to actually transfer the user object from the DefaultMutableTreeNode for my application to really work correctly so that meant providing my own TransferHandler and Transferable implementations.

Well, I sort of got it working but wanted to spruce it up with a nice icon when the node is being dragged. Looking at the API (and in my case the source code) I found a method:

public Icon getVisualRepresentation(Transferable transferable)

that I can simply override and provide my icon. So I did this but no icon was showing up. Debugging I then found this method was never even called. Google time!! Found this:

http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=4816922

Reported in 2003. Still not fixed. Ok, so drag and drop works. But it looks like garbage and I had a hard enough time getting this to work as is. I personally don't feel like I should have to go and override all the drag source and drag target nonsense just for something like this. Absolutely rediculous that Sun can't (won't) fix something like this. I'm curious if this works in JavaFX only to the extent of if it does, why can't they backport it into Swing?

So freaking ticked off right now because even though this is a trivial issue that doesn't stop my app from working Swing is full of these kinds of bugs that have been sitting for years.

Sun Abandons Non-RIA Developers

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:11:00 GMT

Reports here and here state Sun is abandoning Swing. Sure, it will be available in the core API for quite some time and I'm sure they'll get to all the bugs. It's not like there have been bugs that have gone unanswered since Swing was first released. Oh wait....

What does this mean?

Netbeans is rewritten in JavaFX and is now used as an Applet.
IntelliJ moves to the .NET or Mono platform and actually gains a performance boost.
Eclipse laughs at all of us for using Swing in the first place
Kirill doesn't blog anymore
....

Keep the list going in the comments. I'm curious what everyone really thinks will happen due to this decision.

Random Thoughts of the Day

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

This is just sort of a rambling of general thoughts that by themselves don't amount to much but all of them together might make for a nice blog entry, I thought.

Choosing the right Tech for a New Project

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:18:00 GMT

For about a year now I've been sitting on a project idea. I've prototyped a few things out, written some stuff down. I've talked to a handful of colleagues about it. Lately it has become something I am more and more interested in doing. Over the last year I've had very little time to spare to anything extra and that is the main reason for it staying on the back burner as long as it has. Now that I'm ready to take a more serious look into its viability I'm beginning to wonder what technical direction to take and how best to make that decision.

Some Thoughts on Swing, MVC, and Available Application API's

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Sometimes while developing I get crazy thoughts and decide to completely go against the norm, mix things up, and do something that someone else at some point tried and already realized what a horrible idea it was. I just feel like I have to put myself through that same pain to learn, I suppose. Of course, I'm developing a large Swing application so my pain threshold is already pretty high.