Java Swing Animation Techniques

animationjavaswing

I have a project written using Swing, and I want to make it more smoothly (like JavaFX is) by adding animation to some components(JButton, JScrollPane, JSplitPane) using javax.swing.Timer.

UPD: That is not a game. I want to use the Timer for short animations like mouseHover events or dropdown, or scroll. But the problem is, a lot of Timer objects should be created.

Question: What action does it perform for JVM? I would start and stop a lot of Timers during app session.

Best Answer

Yes if you wanna do the animation yourself, javax.swing.Timer is your best option. It is lightweight and guarantees your code executes on the EDT thread. If you venture into the depths of swing components like JScrollPane you might encounter javax.swing.Timer being used for things like auto scrolling during drag and drop etc. In short animation in swing is quite possible but rare in standard components. Just keep your redraw area to the minimum and repaint wisely. I would advocate looking into timing framework though.

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What are the best practices of Java Swing development

I can only answer for what's worked for me. Other commentors have pointed out that Java GUIs in general fall into the 'uncanny valley' of not-quite-native look and feel, and I don't dispute this.

Make good use of the Action API. It lets you better encapsulate different actions your user will perform and allow you to wire them up to shortcuts, accelerator keys, buttons and other input objects much more easily.

Use an appropriate layout manager. GridBagLayout is extremely powerful, but I would go so far as to say it is unmaintainable without an excessive amount of comments. When I run static code analysis tools such as Sonar over an older GUI app I maintain, it always points out the massive amounts of magic numbers to make the GridBags layout just right. I've had plenty of success with GroupLayout, which avoids having to specify pixel-perfect alignment.

If you think you need a JDialog... you probably don't. Dialog boxes are horrible, in terms of user experience -- this application decided to use them for every menu and form, and to enforce always-on-top rules in bizarre ways. This turned into a maintenance nightmare when we actually did need to alert something over the menu. Cue frustrated clicking on unfocusable -- and thus undismissable -- dialogs.

Use SwingWorker instead of rolling your own multithreading, where appropriate. It's very easy to extend SwingWorker and do some longrunning task while providing regular updates back to the GUI. Think downloading a client update. It'll handle the worker thread scheduling for you and let you publish download percentages back to the view, so you can update your ProgressBar or what have you.

That's all I can suggest, in my admittedly limited experience.

Java Swing – Frustration with Java Swing Layout Managers

What I would like to be able to do is jave a simple JFrame and then for each component (like JLabel) simply specify X and Y coordinates where I want it to be situated -- done deal.

You can do that with null layout:

jPanel.setLayout(null);
jLabel.setBounds(5, 5, 200, 300);
jPanel.add(jLabel);
jFrame.add(jPanel);

Best Answer

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What are the best practices of Java Swing development

Java Swing – Frustration with Java Swing Layout Managers

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