Release 5.2 of Substance look-and-feel made a few visual changes to the Raven Graphite skins, but these did not address the overall usability of these skins – especially the contrast between the background and the controls, and the background / foreground contrast of text components.
The latest drop of version 5.3dev (code named Reykjavik) features significant overhaul of both Raven Graphite skins, aiming to address the contrast usability issues raised by the users.
Here is a screenshot of a sample application under the Raven Graphite skin in the latest stable 5.2 release:
And here is the same application under the 5.3dev drop:
Here is another screenshot of the same application under the old Raven Graphite visuals:
and the new visuals under the latest 5.3dev drop:
The main changes are:
- Removing the watermark that contributed significant visual noise
- Darker border color for controls, bringing more delineation to check boxes and radio buttons
- Darker background color for text components, resulting in better readability
The same changes were made for the Raven Graphite Glass skin. Here is the sample application under the stable 5.2 release:
and here is the same application under the latest 5.3dev drop:
In addition to the visual changes above, the Raven Graphite Glass skin has removed the glass arc gradient from the toolbars and added a two-tone separator to delineate the title bar / menu bar from the rest of the application content.
To illustrate the visual difference in a larger content, here is a screenshot of a big UI under the stable 5.2 release (click to see the full-size view):
and the same application under the 5.3dev branch:
If you want to take the new visuals for a spin, click on the WebStart button below and change the skin to Raven Graphite and Raven Graphite Glass from the “Skins” menu:
You’re more than welcome to take the latest 5.3dev drop for a spin and leave your comments.
As mentioned in the JavaOne presentation on the Flamingo ribbon component, there are a few small features missing in the Swing implementation. The first drop of version 4.2dev (code-named Hiolair) now provides support for placing small command buttons in ribbon galleries.
A ribbon gallery is a compact way to display a large number of buttons that control the specific visual appearance of the selected document element. The ribbon gallery fits itself to the available horizontal space, and allows two navigation modes:
- Using the scroll-up and scroll-down buttons to view additional button rows inside the ribbon itself
- Using the expand button to view all the buttons in a scrollable popup
Here is how a ribbon gallery hosting big command buttons looks like:
And when it is expanded (with the bottom-right button), it looks like this:
Up until now the ribbon has supported placing only big buttons in ribbon galleries. Starting with version 4.2, the new JRibbonBand.addRibbonGallery that gets the CommandButtonDisplayState as one of the parameters can be used to create a ribbon gallery that hosts small command buttons. The following display states are supported:
- JRibbonBand.BIG_FIXED_LANDSCAPE – this is the default display state. The buttons display big icon and text below it, and the buttons have fixed 5:4 ratio when displayed in the popup.
- JRibbonBand.BIG_FIXED. The buttons display big icon and text below it, and the buttons have fixed 1:1 ratio when displayed in the popup.
- CommandButtonDisplayState.SMALL. The buttons display only small icon with no text.
Here is a ribbon gallery that hosts small command buttons (in three rows):
And this is how it looks when it is expanded:
You’re more than welcome to take the first drop of version 4.2dev for a spin. You can also play with the WebStart demo of the ribbon under Substance look-and-feel by clicking on the button below. Switch to “Animations” task for a ribbon gallery with small command buttons.
I’ve just finished presenting my JavaOne session on the ribbon component. Thanks to everybody for coming. To all of you who attended but want to see the slides once again, and to those of you who couldn’t attend, here are the slides:
Since there were no animations in the slides, the two versions should be identical.
The test applications shown in the session can be found in the test.* package of Flamingo and Substance Flamingo distribution archives.
I am pleased today to announce the availability of the final release for version 4.1 of Flamingo component suite (code-named Guenivere). It is a stabilization release that adds a few minor features and fixes all known bugs.
Here is the list of minor features added in release 4.1:
- Multi-row controls in ribbon bands
- Rich tooltips for ribbon band expand buttons
- Horizontal alignment for wrapped ribbon components
- Internal tracking of disabled state of popup / action areas on command buttons for selecting the correct displayed icon
- Tree breadcrumb adapter class is now abstract to enforce applications to provide the segment caption
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):
You are more than welcome to take Flamingo 4.1 for a ride and report any problems in the project mailing lists, forums or issue tracker.
Release 4.1 will be the base for the JavaOne technical session 4143 that will be held next Thursday, June 4th at 13:30 in Hall E 135. If you’re interested to hear about the ribbon and the Swing implementation, as well as in a few ribbon tricks that you might not be aware about, please drop by.
