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):
The 4.1final drop of Flamingo (code-named Guenivere)
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.
I am thrilled today to announce the availability of the final release for version 5.2 of Substance look-and-feel (code-named Quebec). The release notes for version 5.2 contain the detailed information on the contents of this release which include the following:
Concluding the series on adding animations to enable rich interactivity expected from modern Swing applications, here is what we have seen so far:
Part 1 – adding simple animation behavior to such scenarios as component appearance (fade in), rollovers and window disposal (fade-out) using built in and custom class attributes and setters.
Part 2 – adding animated load progress indication while the application is loading data.
Part 3 – loading the album art matching the specific search string and asynchronously displaying the associated images.
Part 4 – scrolling the album covers showed in the container and adding animations to the scrolling.
Run the org.pushingpixels.onyx.DemoApp class, passing your Amazon key as the only parameter to this class, adding the Amazon, Trident and Onyx classes to the classpath
If all went right, you should see the main application running and displaying Sarah McLachlan albums as in this video:
I hope you enjoyed this series. If you’re interested in adding rich animations to your Swing applications, you’re more than welcome to explore Trident and Onyx and report any bugs and missing features in the project forums and mailing lists.
After adding such animation effects as fading, translucency, load progress, asynchronous load of images and smooth scrolling in the application window connected to the Amazon backend, it’s time to talk about more complex transition scenarios. In this entry i’m going to talk about displaying larger album art and scrollable track listing when the specific album is selected, along with a complex transition between selected albums. This code is part of the Onyx project which aims to provide blueprints for animated Swing applications powered by the Trident animation library.
Here is a screenshot that illustrates the detailed view of the selected album (and you can view the videos in the first part of this series):
The full sources of this view are in the SVN repository, and i’m going to talk about the full transition scenario that is played when the user selects a specific album. This scenario has six steps:
(Relevant when the details window already shows album art) – collapse the album art component and track listing component to fully overlap.
(In parallel with step 1) – load the new album art from the Internet (based on the URL returned from the original Amazon E-commerce request).
(After steps 1 and 2 have both completed) – set the loaded album art on the album art component. This may also cause resizing the album art if it cannot fully fit in the available space.
(In parallel with step 3) – set the list of album tracks on the track listing component.
(After steps 3 and 4 have both completed) – cross fade the old album art to the new album art.
(After step 5 has been completed) – move the album art component (that displays the new album art) and the track listing to be displayed side by side.
To implement this complex timeline scenario, the code uses the rendezvous timeline scenario provided by Trident. Timeline.RendezvousSequence allows simple branch-and-wait ordering. The rendezvous scenario has a stage-like approach. All actors belonging to the same stage run in parallel, while actors in stage N+1 wait for all actors in stage N to be finished. The RendezvousSequence.rendezvous marks the end of one stage and the beginning of another.
Here is how the code looks like:
/**
* Returns the timeline scenario that implements a transition from the
* currently shown album item (which may be null) to the
* specified album item.
*
* @param albumItem
* The new album item to be shown in this window.
* @return The timeline scenario that implements a transition from the
* currently shown album item (which may be null) to
* the specified album item.
*/
private TimelineScenario getShowAlbumDetailsScenario(final Item albumItem) {
TimelineScenario.RendezvousSequence scenario = new TimelineScenario.RendezvousSequence();
// step 1 - move album art and track listing to the same location
Timeline collapseArtAndTracks = new Timeline(this);
collapseArtAndTracks.addPropertyToInterpolate("overlayPosition",
this.overlayPosition, 0.0f);
collapseArtAndTracks.setDuration((int) (500 * this.overlayPosition));
scenario.addScenarioActor(collapseArtAndTracks);
// step 2 (in parallel) - load the new album art
final BufferedImage[] albumArtHolder = new BufferedImage[1];
TimelineSwingWorker loadNewAlbumArt = new TimelineSwingWorker() {
@Override
protected Void doInBackground() throws Exception {
URL url = new URL(albumItem.getLargeImage().getURL());
albumArtHolder[0] = ImageIO.read(url);
return null;
}
};
scenario.addScenarioActor(loadNewAlbumArt);
scenario.rendezvous();
// step 3 (wait for steps 1 and 2) - replace album art
TimelineRunnable replaceAlbumArt = new TimelineRunnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
albumArt.setAlbumArtImage(albumArtHolder[0]);
}
};
scenario.addScenarioActor(replaceAlbumArt);
// step 4 (in parallel) - replace the track listing
TimelineRunnable replaceTrackListing = new TimelineRunnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
trackListingScroller.setAlbumItem(albumItem);
}
};
scenario.addScenarioActor(replaceTrackListing);
scenario.rendezvous();
// step 5 (wait for steps 3 and 4) - cross fade album art from old to
// new
Timeline albumArtCrossfadeTimeline = new Timeline(this.albumArt);
albumArtCrossfadeTimeline.addPropertyToInterpolate("oldImageAlpha",
1.0f, 0.0f);
albumArtCrossfadeTimeline.addPropertyToInterpolate("imageAlpha", 0.0f,
1.0f);
albumArtCrossfadeTimeline.addCallback(new Repaint(this.albumArt));
albumArtCrossfadeTimeline.setDuration(400);
scenario.addScenarioActor(albumArtCrossfadeTimeline);
scenario.rendezvous();
// step 6 (wait for step 5) - move new album art and track listing to
// be side by side.
Timeline separateArtAndTracks = new Timeline(this);
separateArtAndTracks.addPropertyToInterpolate("overlayPosition", 0.0f,
1.0f);
separateArtAndTracks.setDuration(500);
scenario.addScenarioActor(separateArtAndTracks);
return scenario;
}
This scenario uses the full capabilities offered by the Trident timeline scenarios which allow combining multiple timeline scenario actors in a parallel, sequential or custom order. There are three core types of timeline scenario actors, all used in this code:
To create a custom timeline scenario, use the following APIs of the TimelineScenario class:
public void addScenarioActor(TimelineScenarioActor actor) adds the specified actor
public void addDependency(TimelineScenarioActor actor, TimelineScenarioActor... waitFor) specifies the dependencies between the actors
The rest of the code is pretty straightforward. It defines the components for album art and track listing, as well as the float position of the overlay between them (during the collapse / expand steps):
/**
* Component that shows the album art.
*/
private BigAlbumArt albumArt;
/**
* Component that shows the scrollable list of album tracks.
*/
private TrackListingScroller trackListingScroller;
/**
* 0.0f - the album art and track listing are completely overlayed, 1.0f -
* the album art and track listing are completely separate. Is updated in
* the {@link #currentShowAlbumDetailsScenario}.
*/
private float overlayPosition;
When these components are added, we make sure that the album art is displayed on top of the track listing (during the collapse stage). In addition, we install a custom layout manager that respects the current value of the overlayPosition field:
Container contentPane = this.getContentPane();
contentPane.setLayout(new LayoutManager() {
@Override
public void addLayoutComponent(String name, Component comp) {
}
@Override
public void removeLayoutComponent(Component comp) {
}
@Override
public Dimension minimumLayoutSize(Container parent) {
return null;
}
@Override
public Dimension preferredLayoutSize(Container parent) {
return null;
}
@Override
public void layoutContainer(Container parent) {
int w = parent.getWidth();
int h = parent.getHeight();
// respect the current overlay position to implement the sliding
// effect in steps 1 and 6 of currentShowAlbumDetailsScenario
int dim = BigAlbumArt.TOTAL_DIM;
int dx = (int) (overlayPosition * dim / 2);
albumArt.setBounds((w - dim) / 2 - dx, (h - dim) / 2, dim, dim);
trackListingScroller.setBounds((w - dim) / 2 + dx,
(h - dim) / 2 + 2, dim, dim - 4);
}
});
contentPane.add(albumArt);
contentPane.add(trackListingScroller);
contentPane.setComponentZOrder(trackListingScroller, 1);
contentPane.setComponentZOrder(albumArt, 0);
The overlayPosition is changed in steps 1 and 6 of the main transition scenario, and the public setter revalidates the container causing the layout:
/**
* Sets the new overlay position of the album art and track listing. This
* method will also cause revalidation of the main window content pane.
*
* @param overlayPosition
* The new overlay position of the album art and track listing.
*/
public void setOverlayPosition(float overlayPosition) {
this.overlayPosition = overlayPosition;
this.getContentPane().invalidate();
this.getContentPane().validate();
}
Finally, the scenario itself is created and played when the mouse listener installed on the album overview component detects a mouse click and calls the setAlbumItem API:
/**
* Signals that details of the specified album item should be displayed in
* this window. Note that this window can already display another album item
* when this method is called.
*
* @param albumItem
* New album item to show in this window.
*/
public void setAlbumItem(Item albumItem) {
if (this.currentShowAlbumDetailsScenario != null)
this.currentShowAlbumDetailsScenario.cancel();
this.currentShowAlbumDetailsScenario = this
.getShowAlbumDetailsScenario(albumItem);
this.currentShowAlbumDetailsScenario.play();
}
Note how we first cancel the currently playing scenario – this handles quick subsequent selections by the user, reversing the currently playing scenario in the middle.
One last thing to note in the transition scenario:
// step 5 (wait for steps 3 and 4) - cross fade album art from old to
// new
Timeline albumArtCrossfadeTimeline = new Timeline(this.albumArt);
albumArtCrossfadeTimeline.addPropertyToInterpolate("oldImageAlpha",
1.0f, 0.0f);
albumArtCrossfadeTimeline.addPropertyToInterpolate("imageAlpha", 0.0f,
1.0f);
albumArtCrossfadeTimeline.addCallback(new Repaint(this.albumArt));
albumArtCrossfadeTimeline.setDuration(400);
Note that this timeline is created on the child album art component. After the new album art has been loaded and scaled (in step 3), we initiate the cross-fading timeline on another object – which is fully supported by Trident timelines.
The rest of the code in this package is very similar to the code examples showed earlier, including custom painting that respects the alpha values, fading out on dispose, translucent window etc.
The final code sample shows how the album details panel is shown. Here, we use a separate translucent Window placed alongside the bottom edge of the main application window:
currentlyShownWindow = new DetailsWindow();
// place the details window centered along the bottom edge of the
// main application window
Point mainWindowLoc = mainWindow.getLocation();
Dimension mainWindowDim = mainWindow.getSize();
int x = mainWindowLoc.x + mainWindowDim.width / 2
- currentlyShownWindow.getWidth() / 2;
int y = mainWindowLoc.y + mainWindowDim.height
- currentlyShownWindow.getHeight() / 2;
currentlyShownWindow.setLocation(x, y);
currentlyShownWindow.setOpacity(0.0f);
currentlyShownWindow.setBackground(new Color(0, 0, 0, 0));
currentlyShownWindow.setVisible(true);
currentlyShownWindow.setAlbumItem(albumItem);
Timeline showWindow = new Timeline(currentlyShownWindow);
showWindow.addPropertyToInterpolate("opacity", 0.0f, 1.0f);
showWindow.setDuration(500);
showWindow.play();
What happens here?
Create a new window and position it in the required location.
Set its opacity to 0.0 (it will be gradually faded in).
Set its background to a fully transparent color – allowing the collapse / expand stage to show the underlying window.
Sets the album item, initiating the transition scenario described above.
Creates and plays the timeline that fades in this window.
