Swing FX: Office 2007 tooltip

Office 2007 tooltip

Translucent and shaped windows in core Java : Pushing Pixels

I first spotted it about a month ago, and today’s build 12 of JDK 6.0u10 delivers on the promise - translucent and shaped windows with core Java classes only!

So, what do you do? First, head over to the JDK6 space at java.net and install 6u10 build 12. After that, you need to point to that install from your project (either IDE or a build script). As Richard mentioned in his Javaposse’s spot, Sun couldn’t publish the relevant APIs in a java.* or javax.* package since officially 6u10 is still not considered a major release. So, the APIs are in com.sun.awt.AWTUtilities. Of course, this may change its place (like Nimbus did), but you can at least start exploring it.

There are a few public static methods in this class, and since the signatures are self-explanatory, you don’t really need the source code. For starters, the inner Translucency enum has three values:

* PERPIXEL_TRANSPARENT - ability to create a shaped window
* TRANSLUCENT - ability to create a translucent window
* PERPIXEL_TRANSLUCENT - ability to create a translucent shaped window

To test support for a specific translucency mode, use AWTUtilities.isTranslucencySupported(Translucency) API. To test whether the specific GraphicsConfiguration supports translucency, use AWTUtilities.isTranslucencyCapable(GraphicsConfiguration) API. This Java class is a simple test utility that illustrates the usage of these two methods. Best thing - even on my Windows 2003 server machine these APIs return true!

Once you know that a specific translucency mode is supported, it’s time to create a shaped and / or translucent window. Let’s start with a simple frame with a few controls (Simple window - java class). Here is how it looks like, with a button, a check box, a radio button and a progress bar:

Jerry’s Java Image Processing Pages

Java Image Filters

I have a large number of Java Image filters which are freely available for download from this site. The filters are all standard Java BufferedImageOps and can be plugged directly into existing programs. All the filters are available in the Java Image Editor and most have dialogs to allow you to play with their settings. If you want to try out any of these filters, I recommend downloading the editor and using the dialogs, which is generally much easier than writing code to try them.

Many of these filters are useful in applications such as games where images need to be generated on the fly, or where it’s quicker to generate them rather than downloading them. For instance, it’s quicker to download one image and rotate it several times than to download several separate images.

Another use for the filters is in animation. For example animating the Water Ripple filter can produce a nice rippling effect. Some of the filters have a time parameter for this purpose.

You can download the filters as a JAR file for your own use.

drewnoakes.com - jpeg exif / iptc metadata extraction in java

What began as a simple utility to extract the date-taken from a digital still camera (DSC) Jpeg file is now a general metadata extraction framework. Support currently exists for Exif and Iptc metadata segments. Extraction of these segments is provided for Jpeg files. It is hoped that individuals with specific needs will extend the framework by adding their own classes.

Information extracted by this library might be of use to you if you’re writing an image browser, image categoriser, photo album, etc… I started coding this library for use in my own photo gallery.

This is the only Java based Exif extraction library I know of. I’ve seen versions in C, Python, PHP and Delphi (see below). This library has also been ported to C#.

This metadata library is available with Java source code for usage in the public domain.

Improve Application Performance With SwingWorker in Java SE 6

Download the Image Search demo source code.

L2FProd.com - Common Components

Swing has lot of components built-in but still some are missing. This project provides the developer community with these missing components, components inspired (copied?!) from modern user interfaces.

Jonathan Yuen (2006)

Michael Muller Photography - Portfolio

JPedal, the Java PDF Viewer with PDF Text Extraction and PDF workflow tools

In active development since 1999, JPedal is a 100% Java PDF developer library. It comprises a PDF viewer and includes functions for enhanced PDF printing, PDF searching and PDF rasterizing. JPedal also comes with a plethora of tools for PDF text, PDF image and PDF content extraction.

JPedal can be used as part of a client or server Swing or SWT application, Flex, thin client, applet, JSP or webstart.

Please note, JPedal is a complete solution offering PDF viewing, PDF extraction and PDF printing functions. You do not need to purchase separate, additional modules.

JH Labs Home Page

JH Labs is the alias of Jerry Huxtable. On this site you will find lots of stuff to do with Java, including source for lots of useful classes and image processing stuff. You’ll also find information on stuff I’m working on. You can email at “jerry at jhlabs.com”, replacing ” at ” with “@”.