Beck et al Projects GMBH has released gui4j 1.1, an open source Java framework for writing Swing GUIs in XML. "The graphical user interface is created dynamically based on the XML definitions. Each GUI window is associated with exactly one top-level XML file. Each XML file can dynamically include other XML files to support complex GUI definitions. Each XML file is associated with a java object that acts as both a Controller and a Model for the GUI. There is a strong layer separation between the GUI and the Controller: GUI definitions in the XML files can access all Java methods of the Controller, but Java methods cannot access any GUI elements directly. Events are used to trigger changes in the GUI." Java 1.4 or later is required.
I've seen a few things like this before. I probably should have used something like this for my latest project but I was lazy and just went with straight Swing code written by hand instead. I'll have to remember this for next time. On the other hand, I am learning quite a bit about test driven GUI programming, some of which I'll be discussing at SD Best Practices in Boston in September.
David Flanagan has released Jude 1.0, an interactive Java documentation browser program that runs as a web server. However, only Mozilla derived browsers (including Firefox) are supported as clients. Jude is $32 payware.
The Eclipse Foundation has posted a preview of BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools). "BIRT is an Eclipse-based open source reporting system for web applications, especially those based on Java and J2EE. BIRT has two main components: a report designer based on Eclipse, and a runtime component that you can add to your app server. BIRT also offers a charting engine that lets you add charts to your own application. BIRT is currently in community review for release 1.0."