Sun has posted an early prototype implementation of JSR-296, Swing Application Framework on java.net.
The JSR-296 Swing Application Framework prototype implementation is a small set of Java classes that simplify building desktop applications. The prototype provides infrastructure that's common to most desktop applications:
- Application lifecyle, notably GUI startup and shutdown.
- Support for managing and loading resources, like strings, formatted messages, images, colors, fonts, and other types common to desktop applications.
- Support for defining, managing, and binding Actions, including Actions that run asynchronously (in the "background").
- Persistent session state: support for automatically and selectively saving GUI state from one run of an application to the next.
The JSR-296 expert group launched this effort in late summer 2006. A prototype implementation, spec, and some small examples are now available. Although the JSR has not reached the "Early Draft" JCP review stage, the expert group has agreed to make the prototype public to give interested members of the Swing community the opportunity to provide feedback. This version is just a snapshot of the ongoing design process, it's likely to change substantially in the coming months.
The intended audience for this snapshot is experienced Swing developers with a moderately high tolerance for pain. Although JSR-296's ultimate goal is to bridge the gap to novice developers, the project's current doc/spec/robustness qualities aren't a good match for novices just yet.
So we're looking for feedback at this point. Constructive feedback would be great; ranting and raving is OK too, particularly if it's funny. We're not looking to adopt an existing framework or even for code contributions however if there's an existing Swing application framework you're fond of, then feedback of the form: "framework X has a feature that JSR-296 lacks and the reason X is important is ...", would be great. Reports about bugs in the current implementation would be welcomed too.