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Web browser and Flash player for Java Swing!

Posted January 9th, 2008 by

The DJ Project allows you to integrate native web browser component and native Flash player into your Swing apps!

Run the demo (if you have Windows) – Webstart Version.

Excepts from DJ Project website:

Mixing native components in Swing

Swing is lightweight, and mixing native components (heavyweight) generates all sorts of problems. Here are some of the most commong problems:

Lightweight and heavyweight components produce visual glitches, like Swing popup menus, tooltips and combo drop menu to appear behind the native components.

Hidden heavyweight components added to the user interface steal the focus, or mess it up.
Swing modality works for Swing components, but the embedded native component are not blocked.

Native integration is hardly portable (by definition).

The threading of the user interface is different in Swing and the native components, as each have their own event pump. Deadlocks occur easily.

Bridging Swing and SWT?

The ideal would be a layer that offers the major native components of SWT, hidden behind a Swing-like API, taking care of all the gory details. That is exactly the goal of the DJ Project – NativeSwing.

What about common integration issues?

The library takes care of all the points that were raised:

All Swing popups are turned to heavyweight components in order to avoid overlapping glitches.

Hidden heavyweight components are prevented from messing up with the focus.

Swing modality is tracked to automatically adjust the modality of the embedded native components.

SWT is mostly portable: the important components are available on most platforms with a consistant API.

The threading of the two toolkits is taken care internally, so users of the library only have to deal with Swing’s threading.

Awesome!

 

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