Here are some Swing links that you might have missed during this week:

• Christophe Le Besnerais has a custom implementation of Paint interface to paint a glossy button with arc-shaped gradient. Paint is one of the more advanced concepts in Java2D and it’s tricky to create a performant implementation. The only visual thing that is missing for here in the whole “web 2.0” concept is the soft-clipping along the arc itself (especially visible if you change the value of the third slider that controls the color of the top part. Chris Campbell has written about this problem before, and his solution involves an intermediate image.
• Roman Kennke posts an update on progress of Caciocavallo project that aims to create an AWT implementation for X Window System without using any of Sun’s internal classes.
• Jacek Furmankiewicz continues working on the SwingBuilder project, adding more support for bindings, long running tasks and integration with Commons Validation.
• Hans Muller‘s swan song has been sent to the users mailing list of AppFramework (reference implementation of JSR 296). I have already mentioned that this project has been effectively dead for the last six months, and Hans has quite a long list of to-do things in his posting. This project has been heavily promoted throughout the entire desktop track at JavaOne this week, and even though Amy Fowler assures that it will continue to be developed, it would be wise to wait and see if the words are backed by @Actions :)
• Geertjan Wielenga writes about using Maxim Zakharenkov‘s SwingExplorer inside a NetBeans module.

And some stray thoughts on JavaOne:

• Underpromise and overdeliver. Good example – the playback video support for JavaFX and Java. Bad example – javafx.com.
• I wonder why the video support hasn’t been featured more prominently during the keynote (instead of the frozen single-threaded demos). This is a very significant step forward for client Java, much more so than glitzier eye-candy dragging applets to the desktop. On the other hand, when the hype is that applets are back, who am i to judge?
• I was almost hoping that the video support would address the number one wish i had for desktop Java in 2008 – cross-platform support for H.264 and FLV. We’re still not there yet – the cross-platform codecs are rather unknown in the general desktop area (one from On2, and another from the Open Media Commons project that has yet to deliver any binaries), and H.264 and FLV will only be supported when native codes are installed.
• And no, those were not 200 different video streams mapped on the rotating cube. Those were 200 different views on a handful of different video streams. Still impressive.
• The best presentation that i have attended did not use a single slide from Sun’s template. Those of you who are familiar with work of Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte should already know the answer to “why?”, and Ben Galbraith’s reputation has apparently allowed him to swerve past Sun’s lawyers and copywriters to present a very strong, clean and focused talk on user and interaction design.
• And while we’re at it – do we really have to ruin every single session title and slide that use the word Java? I think we can figure out if Java is Java™ technology, Java™ platform or Java™ programming language by ourselves . At least they didn’t turn “Effective Java” into “Effective Java™ Programming Language”…
• Literally bending and picking ugly things off the stage, having dozens of people come and go, showing IDE screens with 50+ lines of code, demoes freezing on the most important day of the year. Makes one wonder why Steve Jobs’ presentations get so much hyped before, during and after…