Java Roots
James Gosling just put online a video of the project Green user interface (141 MB). Green, and its language Oak which later became Java, was running on the Star7, some sort of PDA/remote control Sun Microsystems was working on. It was in 1992. Enjoy, it’s worth the look.
Free Sample Chapter for Filthy Rich Clients
InformIT is hosting a free sample chapter of Filthy Rich Clients, the book Chet Haase and I recently published. InformIT offers the full chapter 8 about image processing with Java 2D. Chapter 8 belongs to Part II of the book, advanced graphics rendering.
Refer to filthyrichclients.org to download the source code of the examples.
Lassen National Park
A few pictures of Lassen National Park, located in northern California. A very beautiful, quiet and interesting place. The fumes and water were full of sulfur though…
82 Swing and Java 2D Demos
Filthy Rich Clients is available and several readers already received their copy. To make sure you can follow all of our examples easily, Chet and I just released the demos of the final chapters: Static Effects, Dynamic Effects and Animated Transitions.
These chapters’ demos are our favorites so make sure to check them out!
The official web [...]
Demos for Chapters 14 and 15
By the way, the source code of the demos from chapters 14 and 15 of the book Filthy Rich Clients are available. These chapters cover the Timing Framework in depth.
New Photo Gallery with iLife 08
I just created a new photo web gallery using iPhoto 08 and the result is great. I am a heavy user of Lightroom, Photoshop CS3 and other complex tools but iPhoto 08 is really tempting. It’s clean and simple.
Photo Equipment
You frequently ask me what kind of photo equipment I use to take my pictures. I thought it would be easier for you and me if I posted this information right here instead of sending individual replies.
My digital camera is DSLR, a Canon EOS 30D. I upgraded from a Canon EOS 350D (or Digital Rebel [...]
San Francisco Panoramas
Two panoramas of San Francisco, taken from Twin Peaks. Nothing really fancy but it’s been hard lately to find a day without clouds nor fog. Flickr hosts versions up to 10,000 pixels large of both pictures. You can also follow these links for higher resolutions:
Panorama 1, 22,000 pixels wide (15 MB)
Panorama 2, 17,000 pixels wide [...]
.Mac Now With 10GB
Following today’s event, Apple just published the announcement of an update to .Mac, their web-based storage and sharing solution. Previously limited to 1 GB of data, including email and WebDAV, .Mac now offers 10 GB of storage.
I am very excited about this announcement as it will make .Mac even more useful to me. I use [...]
The Book is Here!
I just received my copy of Filthy Rich Clients, the book I wrote with Chet Haase. You will probably be happy to know that you will soon stop hearing about it on this blog :)
Leaving Google, Back to Google
Today was my last as an intern at Google. It was also my last day as an intern ever. I really enjoyed my time at Google and I love the project I was working on.
I’m also happy to say that I accepted Google’s job offer and I will come back to California in a couple [...]
Progress Bars Are Boring (Extreme GUI Makeover)
Some applications, like Eclipse, show a progress bar in their splash screen during the startup phase. This is a useful way to show the user that the application is actually working in the background. It helps the user to wait for the end of the process without kicking. Without such a progress indicator, the application [...]
Putting Blurry Background to Good Use
I blogged a while ago about Artemis. This simple tool uses a blurry background to draw user’s attention onto a modal progress bar. Artemis is a good example of how you can use a blurry background. It emphasizes the importance of the modal dialog which doesn’t require any context.
You can watch a video of Artemis [...]
Rounded Corners and Shadow for Dialogs (Extreme GUI Makeover)
At JavaOne 2007, the Extreme GUI Makeover demo showed a semi-translucent dialog over a blurry background. This effect was explained in a previous entry on this blog. However, I received a few requests asking how the dialog itself was implemented.
This dialog is shown in the screenshot below. Not only is it translucent, but it also [...]
Another Pretty Java Application
JavaDesktop.org just published a new Swing Sighting. The application is called Palantir and sports a very clean, very modern-looking Swing user interface. They even emulated Office 2007 menu/toolbar. I really urge you to go take a look at the screenshots.
Blurred Background for Dialogs (Extreme GUI Makeover 2007)
Shannon, Chris and I showed many cool effects during this year’s Extreme GUI Makeover session, at JavaOne 2007. Since we cannot release the source code yet, I will explain some of the effects in detail. I will start with the blurred background displayed when a modal dialog shows up.
Blurring a dialog’s or a menu’s background [...]
