kirillcool's Blog

Animation blueprints for SWT

Over at Pushing Pixels i have ran the series on adding animations to enable rich interactivity expected from modern SWT applications. The code is part of the Granite project which aims to provide blueprints for animated SWT applications powered by the Trident animation library, and the series has covered the following:

• Part 1 – adding simple animation behavior to such scenarios as component appearance (fade in) and window disposal (fade-out) using built in and custom class attributes and setters.
• Part 2 – adding animated load progress indication while the application is loading data.
• Part 3 – loading the album art matching the specific search string and asynchronously displaying the associated images.
• Part 4 – scrolling the album covers showed in the container and adding animations to the scrolling.
• Part 5 – complex transition scenarios.

How can you run this code locally?

• Get the latest SVN snapshots of Trident and Granite
• Add the following Eclipse libraries to the project: org.eclipse.core.jobs, org.eclipse.equinox.common, org.eclipse.osgi
• The Onyx distribution contains the lib/amazon.jar. It has been created with the following steps:
  • wsimport -d ./build -s ./src -p com.ECS.client.jax http://ecs.amazonaws.com/AWSECommerceService/AWSECommerceService.wsdl .
  • jar cvf ../amazon.jar .
• Get an Amazon E-commerce key
• Run the org.pushingpixels.granite.DemoApp class, passing your Amazon key as the only parameter to this class, adding the Amazon, Trident and Granite classes, as well as Eclipse jars to the classpath

If all went right, you should see the main application running and displaying Sarah McLachlan albums as in this video:

I hope you enjoyed this series. If you’re interested in adding rich animations to your SWT applications, you’re more than welcome to explore Trident and Granite and report any bugs and missing features in the project forums and mailing lists.

Trident animation library - overview and roadmap

Trident is an animation library for Java applications, and this week i’ve written about the concepts behind it and APIs available to interested applications:

• Part 1 – Hello world
• Part 2 – interpolating fields
• Part 3 – timeline life cycle
• Part 4 – duration fraction and timeline position
• Part 5 – supporting UI toolkits
• Part 6 – simple Swing / SWT examples
• Part 7 – parallel timelines in Swing and SWT
• Part 8 – timeline scenarios
• Part 9 – key frames
• Part 10 – extending the core with plugins

What’s next? Version 1.0 (code-named Acumen) is right around the corner. Release candidate is scheduled for June 29, and the final release is scheduled for July 13.

Trident is a new library, and its APIs need to be tested in real-world scenarios. While i have a few small test applications that illustrate the specific API methods, as well as medium sized demos (Onyx and Amber), there is always room for improvement.

Going forward, i intend to evolve Trident, and i already have a couple of post-1.0 features in the pipeline. Trident has evolved from the internal animation layer of Substance look-and-feel, and the next major release of Substance will be rewritten to use Trident – further testing the published APIs for usage in real-world scenarios. In addition, the next major release of Flamingo ribbon will add Trident-based animations – where applicable.

Your input and feedback are always highly appreciated. Download the latest daily bits, and read the documentation. Subscribe to the mailing lists and let me know what is missing, and how the existing APIs can be improved. If you find a bug, report it in the issue tracker. If you want to take a look at the code, check out the SVN repository and subscribe to the “commits” mailing list.

Swing / SWT applications do not have to be boring. Trident aims to simplify the development of rich animation effects in Java based UI applications, addressing both simple and complex scenarios. But it can only be as good as the applications that are using it. So, read the documentation, download the sources / binaries, integrate it in your applications and let me know what you think.

Substance 5.2 official release

I am thrilled today to announce the availability of the final release for version 5.2 of Substance look-and-feel (code-named Quebec). The release notes for version 5.2 contain the detailed information on the contents of this release which include the following:

• The new Dust skin
• The new Dust Coffee skin
• The new Twilight skin
• More control over border painting
• Visual refresh of Raven Graphite skins
• Improved decoration area support for lists, tables and trees
• Visual improvement of inner borders under very large font sizes

Click on the button below to launch a signed WebStart application that shows the available Substance features.

The following sub-projects are also available as releases:

• Substance plugin for SwingX component suite build 1719 from March 28. See test application.
• Substance plugin for Flamingo component suite 4.1. See test applications.

You are more than welcome to take Substance 5.2 for a ride and report any problems in the project mailing lists, forums or issue tracker.

Sample screenshots of Substance 5.2 in action:

Introducing Project Onyx - Animation Blueprints for Swing

Project Onyx aims to provide blueprints for adding animation to Swing applications using the Trident animation engine. Onyx is a Swing RIA that connects to Amazon E-commerce backend and shows a list of albums for a specific performer. It is a pure Swing / Java2D application with only two dependencies - Trident and the classes generated by the wsimport tool from the Amazon E-commerce WSDL.

Over the next few entries i’m going to show code snippets that illustrate how Trident can be used to add simple and complex animations to your Swing applications. The full code is in the SVN repository, and here are a few videos that show the different parts of Onyx in action:

Fading in the main Onyx window, rollover animations on the close button and fading out the main window on disposing:

Asynchronously connecting to Amazon to fetch and display the list of albums, with fading and looping load progress animation, and smooth album scrolling:

Showing bigger album art and scrollable track listing in a separate window when an album is selected, complete with a complex scenario of showing the art and switching between the albums: