Onyx reloaded

May 22nd, 2010

Exactly a year ago I’ve introduced project Onyx – animation blueprints for Swing using the Trident animation library. Onyx is a small application that loads album information for the specific artist from the Internet and displays it as a scrollable gallery. Here is how Onyx looked a year ago:

And here is how Onyx looks now:

Along with running on Java 6 (with Java 7 weekly binaries for Mac nowhere in sight), Onyx also has received a slight visual facelift for the main window. First, let’s see the code for disposing a window by fading it out:

public static void fadeOutAndDispose(final Window window,
      int fadeOutDuration) {
   Timeline dispose = new Timeline(window);

   try {
      Class clazz = Class.forName("com.sun.awt.AWTUtilities");
      final Method opacityMethod = clazz.getDeclaredMethod(
            "setWindowOpacity", Window.class, float.class);

      dispose.addPropertyToInterpolate(Timeline. property(
            "opacity").from(1.0f).to(0.0f).setWith(
            new PropertySetter() {
               @Override
               public void set(Object obj, String fieldName,
                     Float value) {
                  try {
                     opacityMethod.invoke(null, obj, value);
                  } catch (Exception exc) {
                     exc.printStackTrace();
                  }
               }
            }));
      dispose.addCallback(new UIThreadTimelineCallbackAdapter() {
         @Override
         public void onTimelineStateChanged(TimelineState oldState,
               TimelineState newState, float durationFraction,
               float timelinePosition) {
            if (newState == TimelineState.DONE) {
               window.dispose();
            }
         }
      });
      dispose.setDuration(fadeOutDuration);
      dispose.play();
   } catch (Exception exc) {
      exc.printStackTrace();
   }
}

With Java 7, you can simply do this:

dispose.addPropertyToInterpolate("opacity", 1.0f, 0.0f);

and let Trident call Window.setOpacity method at every timeline pulse. In Java 6 (starting with 6u10), the AWTUtilities.setWindowOpacity needs to be called on every pulse explicitly.

And here is the code for painting the main content window. First, we store the current clip and enable anti-aliasing:

@Override
protected void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
   Graphics2D g2d = (Graphics2D) g.create();
   Shape clip = g2d.getClip();

   g2d.setStroke(new BasicStroke(1.0f));
   g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING,
         RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON);

Next, we compute the outer and inner contours of the panel (the inner contour will be painted with slightly brighter colors as shown in the screenshot above):

   int radius = 16;

   Shape contour = new RoundRectangle2D.Double(0, 0, getWidth() - 1,
         getHeight() - 1, radius, radius);
   Shape innerContour = new RoundRectangle2D.Double(1, 1, getWidth() - 3,
         getHeight() - 3, radius - 1, radius - 1);

When the main window is first shown and disposed, a special timeline is played to make the window appear and disappear smoothly. The timeline interpolates the alpha field between 0.0 and 0.9. The main panel has two parts – the bright blue header and the black content. While the content is painted based on the current value of alpha, the header uses less translucency:

   g2d.setComposite(AlphaComposite.SrcOver.derive(1.0f - (float) Math.pow(
         1.0f - alpha, 3.0)));

To paint the header, we first update the current clip to make sure that the painting is only done in the header section. Next, we fill the contour, draw the inner contour and draw the outer contour – all based on the specific colors required by the target design:

   // top part
   g2d.clipRect(0, 0, getWidth(), TITLE_HEIGHT);
   g2d.setPaint(new LinearGradientPaint(0, 0, 0, TITLE_HEIGHT,
         new float[] { 0.0f, 0.49999f, 0.5f, 1.0f }, new Color[] {
               new Color(119, 152, 251), new Color(80, 127, 250),
               new Color(48, 109, 250), new Color(10, 97, 250) }));
   g2d.fill(contour);
   g2d.setPaint(new GradientPaint(0, 0, new Color(151, 179, 253), 0,
         TITLE_HEIGHT, new Color(19, 92, 233)));
   g2d.draw(innerContour);
   g2d.setColor(new Color(11, 61, 200));
   g2d.draw(contour);

Now we restore the clip:

   g2d.setClip(clip);

If we have an artist name to display, we position it in the middle of the title area (using font ascent for proper baseline alignment) and paint the string twice to create a lighting effect:

   if (this.searchString != null) {
      g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_TEXT_ANTIALIASING,
            RenderingHints.VALUE_TEXT_ANTIALIAS_ON);
      g2d.setFont(UIManager.getFont("Label.font").deriveFont(14.0f)
            .deriveFont(Font.BOLD));
      int fa = g2d.getFontMetrics().getAscent();
      int x = (getWidth() - g2d.getFontMetrics().stringWidth(
            this.searchString)) / 2;
      int y = (TITLE_HEIGHT + fa) / 2;
      g2d.setColor(new Color(31, 60, 114));
      g2d.drawString(this.searchString, x, y + 1);
      g2d.setColor(new Color(255, 255, 255));
      g2d.drawString(this.searchString, x, y);
   }

The main content area is painted in the same way as the header. We update the clip, fill the contour, draw the inner contour and draw the outer contour:

   // bottom part
   g2d.setComposite(AlphaComposite.SrcOver.derive(this.alpha));
   g2d.clipRect(0, TITLE_HEIGHT, getWidth(), getHeight() - TITLE_HEIGHT
         + 1);

   g2d.setColor(new Color(0, 0, 0));
   g2d.fill(contour);
   g2d.setPaint(new GradientPaint(0, TITLE_HEIGHT, new Color(57, 56, 57),
         0, getHeight() - TITLE_HEIGHT, new Color(50, 48, 50)));
   g2d.draw(innerContour);
   g2d.setPaint(new GradientPaint(0, TITLE_HEIGHT, new Color(13, 11, 15),
         0, getHeight() - TITLE_HEIGHT, new Color(15, 8, 13)));
   g2d.draw(contour);

Finally, we draw a single line separator between the title and main content areas:

   // separator
   g2d.setClip(clip);
   g2d.setColor(new Color(12, 11, 12));
   g2d.drawLine(1, TITLE_HEIGHT, getWidth() - 2, TITLE_HEIGHT);

   g2d.dispose();
}

To see the latest Onyx in action, click on the button below to launch the WebStart demo. Use the mouse wheel to scroll between the albums. Click a specific album to show a larger cover and the track list.

If you cannot run the demo, here is a short video of Onyx in action:

Release miscellania

April 14th, 2010

In addition to releasing Trident 1.2 and Substance 6.0, today i have released the following:

  • Laf-Plugin version 1.2 code named Landshark. This is used by Substance to find and load its plugins.
  • Laf-Widget version 5.0 code named Magnolia. This is used by Substance to add visual and behavioral features to specific component types.
  • Lightbeam version 1.1 code named Betelgeuse. This is used to analyze Substance performance and make sure there are no performance regressions.
  • Rainbow version 1.2 code named Blackstone. A small test application written with Alex Potochkin to test Substance, Flamingo and JXLayer.

An unfortunate omission is the Flamingo component suite. As much as i would have loved to be able to have Flamingo 5.0 join the release train today, it was not realistic given the time constraints. So, instead of delaying the releases of all the projects, i have decided to have Flamingo be developed in its own timeline. The final 6.0 release of Substance Flamingo is based on the latest 5.0dev daily drops of Flamingo core. As the work on Flamingo core continues, the interested applications will need to use daily builds of Substance and Substance Flamingo. My intent is to release Flamingo 5.0 together with Substance 6.1.

Trident 1.2 official release

April 14th, 2010

It is a great pleasure to announce the availability of the final release or version 1.2 of Trident animation library (code-named Cookie Jar). The major milestone for this release is moving Substance 6.0 to use Trident – along with validating the library performance and flexibility to support a wide variety of UI animations. Trident 1.2 has also added a few new APIs to address a few common application requirements:

  • Custom property accessors
  • Refined APIs for stopping timelines

You’re more than welcome to take Trident 1.2 for a ride and see what it can do to add animations to your Swing and SWT applications. To see how Trident is used to drive application animation scenarios, see its use in the following projects:

It is a great pleasure to announce the availability of the final release or version 6.0 of Substance look-and-feel (code-named Sonoma). The release notes for version 6.0 contain the detailed information on the contents of this release which include the following:

  • Multi-state animated transitions
  • New look for text based components (text fields, combo boxes, spinners, date pickers)
  • Custom component states
  • Support for drop location

Animations in Substance 6.0 are powered by the Trident animation library. You will need to add the matching Trident jar to your classpath. Substance 6.0 is using version 1.2 of Trident which can be downloaded from the main Trident download area or from the Substance 6.0 download area.

In addition to deprecated APIs that have been removed in version 6.0 (see the release notes for version 5.3), application code that uses the following Substance APIs will need to be revisited:

  • All painter APIs now operate on a single color scheme. Application code that passed two different color schemes will now need to call the matching APIs twice, and use the relevant composites on the graphics context.
  • Configuring the animation settings is now done with the org.pushingpixels.lafwidget.animation.AnimationConfigurationManager APIs. In addition, application that want to control the resolution of the animation pulses should consult the Trident documentation on this topic.

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

The following sub-projects are also available:

You are more than welcome to take Substance 6.0 for a ride. Sample screenshots of Substance 6.0 in action: