I am extremely pleased today to announce the availability of release candidate for version 4.0 of Flamingo component suite (code-named Fainnear). As detailed in the roadmap for this release, the goal was to provide the missing functionality from the Office 2007 Command Bar, and the journey that has started in September 2005 has arrived at its most important milestone so far.

I can finally say that the Flamingo ribbon can be used to create Swing ribbon-driven applications. While some of the minor functionality will have to be postponed to the next few releases, Fainnear provides all the major building blocks to create sophisticated ribbon content and wire it to the custom application logic. The release notes for version 4.0 contain the detailed information on the contents of this release which include:

• Application menu button and application menu
• Application title bar
• Resize and resize sequencing policies
• Scrolling shrinked ribbon content
• Rich tooltips
• Key tips
• Ribbon minimized mode
• Visual groups in ribbon bands
• Ribbon flow bands
• Hosting core Swing components in ribbon
• Rich popup panels
• Ribbon help button
• A03 plugin for Flamingo
• High fidelity Substance skins
• Polished command button strip visuals
• Control over command button gap scaling

To see the Flamingo ribbon component in action under core look-and-feels, run the following WebStart demo:

To see the Flamingo ribbon component in action under Substance look-and-feel, run the following WebStart demo:

If you want to test the ribbon in your applications, you would need the following (the last two only for applications running under Substance look-and-feel):

• The 4.0RC drop of Flamingo (code-named Fainnear)
• The 5.1RC drop of Substance (code-named Panama)
• The 5.1RC drop of Substance Flamingo plugin

You are more than welcome to take Flamingo 4.0RC for a ride and report any problems in the project mailing lists, forums or issue tracker. The final release is scheduled for February 6. Only bugs will be fixed until that date.

Sample screenshots of Flamingo 4.0 in action: