Josh On Design

I got back from the Java Posse Roundup yesterday. Due to complications with my flights I was forced to spend an annoying Saturday night in a hotel in Denver. Still, the conference overall was worth it. I've got a bunch of things to share with you over the next few days so I'm just going to give you a few quick updates today.

Nimbus

At Desktop Matters SwingLabs announced the Nimbus Look and Feel, a Swing L&F based on the GTK theme created for the Java Desktop. It looks really good and may be included in a future JRE. In the mean time you can download the jar from SwingLabs. Here are some screenshots (1, 2, 3. I just ran SwingSet2 with it and it looks great. Try it with webstart here

AB5k

We've been fixing lots of bugs in AB5k. In particular the shaped internal frames should work properly on Windows now. I've also added a simple guide to building your own desklets, a FAQ, and fixed the DNS so that ab5k.org and ab5k.com all go to the same place. Cooper also just added our first try at automatic widget updating.

I think AB5k is coming along quite well. We've gotten notice on Artima and Java Lobby; though that last discussion had at lot to say about AB5k's lack of maturity. I agree that it needs work, but that is why I decided to release it early. I wanted to get the community involved as early as possible. To that end I'm asking everyone interested in widgets on Java to join the discussion group and contribute their thoughts. Thanks!

Java One

Our AB5k talk isn't in the JavaOne PDF catalog but it is in the searchable catalog; so don't worry, we'll be there. There should be a new PDF out at some point.

Coming soon

A menu designer, 3d utilities, 3d video, lessons from The Roundup, 1and more AB5k updates. Oh, and of course, lots of photos!

updates

Added link to Jasper's blog entry with a webstart link to the Nimbus demo.