Introducing an emboss effect to JavaFX

Wikipedia's Embossing entry defines embossing as "the process of creating a three-dimensional image or design in paper and other ductile materials." A few years back, I presented an algorithm for embossing images in my Java Tech: Image Embossing article.

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Deploying Swing and JavaFX applications to the masses

Sun's (and now Oracle's) desires for Java/Swing's and JavaFX's success on the client depend upon how easy it is for the average user to install the appropriate version of Java/JavaFX on their platform. Furthermore, these desires depend upon browsers being able to launch Swing and JavaFX applications without problems.

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Enriching your Swing-based user interfaces

You're developing a Swing application that will be delivered to your company's clients. The application's user interface consists of several screens, starting with a login screen in which the user must enter a user ID and a password. After clicking the screen's LOGIN button, the application validates the entered credentials in some fashion, and (assuming they are valid) takes the user to the second screen.

Listing 1 codifies a simplistic version of this application.

Listing 1: PoorUIApp.java

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Reducing JavaFX's memory footprint via a CustomNode alternative

Much has been written about JavaFX's performance from the perspective of execution speed. Because less has been written about performance in terms of memory footprint, I was interested to discover developer Markus Kohler's JavaFX memory overhead blog post.

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A skinnable button component for JavaFX

JavaFX's CustomNode class lets you create reusable node-based components for your user interfaces. Because these components aren't skinnable, you can't change a component's appearance and/or behavior without rewriting the component. Fortunately, Sun has addressed this limitation by providing the javafx.scene.control package with its two core classes:

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A SwingSpinnerList component for JavaFX

JavaFX 1.0 and 1.1 provide a javafx.ext.swing package of Swing-based component classes that JavaFX scripts can access to build desktop-oriented user interfaces. Although this package contains many useful component classes, it lacks classes for advanced Swing components such as progress bars, trees, and tables. However, it's easy to create classes for these overlooked components.

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Java SE 6's little AWT changes mean a lot

Java SE 6's official December 11, 2006 release and subsequent updates introduced many changes that impact client-side Java. Along with significant new APIs such as those for working with the desktop, splash screens, translucent and shaped windows, multiple gradient paints, and the system tray, Java SE 6 introduced many smaller client-oriented changes.

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The Swing Cookbook

Ian Darwin's Java Cookbook presents a collection of recipes for solving hundreds of problems that Java developers encounter. For example, in the first edition, one of Chapter 2's recipes discusses how to use the classpath effectively. To the best of my knowledge, O'Reilly hasn't published a similar cookbook that deals exclusively with Swing.

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Invoking JavaFX functions that don't exist

What happens when you try to execute the following Java code fragment?

String s = null;
System.out.println (s.length ());

It's not hard to figure out that a NullPointerException object is thrown. You cannot invoke a method via the null reference.

However, you can get away with something similar in JavaFX Script, which the following code fragment demonstrates:

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