Recent Posts by Geertjan Wielenga

A new and interesting article at "AjaxWorld Magazine". Click the image below to jump straight to the article: I'm hoping the article will continue by describing and comparing the various Swing application frameworks available—Spring RCP, JSR 296, NetBeans Platform, Griffon, as well as the docking frameworks, like MyDoggy and others. I would be very interested to see the author's take on all those.

If yesterday's list of NetBeans APIs are to be seen as the NetBeans Platform's "Top 10 Greatest Hits" (the 10th place is still open to suggestions), then those that follow are its "Top 10 Runners Up". In other words, though the following don't belong to the central set of NetBeans APIs, they are important nonetheless and, in each case, are APIs that you need to have in your mental toolbox next time you start thinking about the infrastructure of your Swing application:Dialogs...

In the first place, the NetBeans Platform is a runtime container for desktop applications, comparable to an application server for web applications. Both handle common concerns, such as lifecycle management, for their target application type. However, secondly, the NetBeans Platform is a set of libraries. In my (humble) opinion, these are the top 10 libraries offered by the NetBeans Platform APIs: Module System API. Enables the modular structure of NetBeans Platform...

I had an interesting discussion recently which started when someone's central reservation to using the NetBeans Platform turned on their assumption that the end product would "look a lot like NetBeans IDE". That is not a very surprising assumption. It is logical to assume that you should consider building your Swing application on the NetBeans Platform if you're thinking about creating "some kind of editor". But it shows a misunderstanding of what the NetBeans Platform is....

In How Users Can Let Children Move Up & Move Down (Part 1), the children class extended Index.ArrayChildren. That was extremely convenient, because (in order for the 'Move Up' and 'Move Down' menu items to be enabled), an implementation of the Index class MUST be included in the root node's Lookup. Since an implementation of Index.ArrayChildren meets this requirement, things look good so long as you're using that class. However, what if you're extending Children.Keys instead? ...

Lloyd and I very conscientiously send prizes to those who win the 'NetBeans Puzzler of the Podcast'. We tend to ask, sometime afterwards, for a pic of the happy winner together with their prize. Below you see one of our recent winners, Lukáš Vlček, with his prize and his daughter: Below is the text he sent with the picture: You can see that the book is now the natural course of events in our family. My daughter cannot wait to get her hands dirty with the code while I read the...

Another podcast filled with info, insights, and innuendo! Here's the agenda (34.17 mins): 1.00: News. Tinu Awopetu, Managing Editor of NetBeans.org, talks about the NetBeans Calendar (next stop of NetBeans Day is Seoul, South Korea, October 17th, i.e., this Friday!), the 10th birthday of the NetBeans project, and... the NetBeans Decathlon! 3.40: Interview. David Strupl, technical lead of JavaFX support in NetBeans IDE, is interviewed by Lloyd. Find out all about David, his...

While looking into some small corners of the Nodes API, I realized that this is probably the simplest Nodes implementation. It is perfect for demos and presentations and trainings, etc. Anyone can code this and it is easy to explain what's going on: class SystemPropertyNode extends Children.Keys { @Override protected void addNotify() { Properties props = System.getProperties(); setKeys(props.stringPropertyNames()); } @Override protected Node[]...