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Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

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Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#51

Post by crispinb »

jcpst wrote: post #34
crispinb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse a quick aside -- do you know of any good examples of real non-enterprisey apps using JavaFX? Java desktop apps seem almost universally awful, but it doesn't seem like it has to be that way. I'd love to see some counter examples (IntelliJ's IDEs are honourable exceptions, but they're a bit of a special case).

Bitwig, an excellent commercial cross-platform DAW, has a UI that is written with Java.

Thanks, looks interesting. Scriptable in javascript too.

I always note with irony that professionals expect to pay decent money (Bitwig is $400) for software relevant to their trade; the one exception being software pros.

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#53

Post by westoncb »

wcauchois wrote: post #52

this is awesome! i love the mix of age-old apis with a cutting edge programming language. this must've been really fun to code.

Haha, yep, it was a lot of fun. Especially going back and using Swing after about a decade of using other UI libs—that was a very interesting experience. When I was initially using Swing it was all I knew and at first I thought of all new systems in terms of it. I even tried re-writing a super stripped down version of it on OpenGL way back when: http://symbolflux.com/statichtml/oldprojects/openglguisystem... :)

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#54

Post by iamcreasy »

westoncb wrote: post #49

Btw, this project started when my sister and I were eating at Panera and decided it would be fun to each write an HN front-end. Hers was largely a project to learn React, which you can see here: http://coribeecroft.com/hacker-news-frontend/ She's looking for work at the moment if anyone knows of someone who might want to hire a somewhat junior but very smart developer with a good sense of humor. See here for more: ht…

Her website is inspiring. I am also graduating this semester, I will compile my works similarly to her.

Hope she lands a great job.

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#55

Post by outworlder »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #45
hota_mazi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means it sucks and looks weird on all platforms. The story of Swing.

Which do you care more about: it works, or it looks good? There's a reason Java became such a big platform for business applications and it isn't because it cared about fashion fads.

It is not only about looking good. Non-native widgets break user interaction is small but irritating ways.

If you are going for non-native widgets, they should at least look good. Otherwise you get the worst of both worlds.

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#56

Post by lmz »

hota_mazi wrote: post #43
gruez wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

follow up question: why does swing use its own special snowflake design, when it could the OS's native design?

Because Sun made the boneheaded decision (and never admitted it was dumb) to go for emulated widget controls instead of native ones. What this means is that they have had to reimplement and imitate the behavior of native controls on all platforms (realistically, Windows only) every time Microsoft came up with a new version. In contrast, IBM took the native approach with SWT / JFace, and the interfaces written with th…

The toolkit based on native widgets existed before Swing. It was called AWT.

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#57

Post by pjmlp »

justboxing wrote: post #26

Ask HN on Show HN: Why is Swing UI still so Ugly ? 2 Decades since it's introduction in 1997 ( I remember being forced to use it in a trading OMS application in 2002), Swing UI looks frozen in time, ugly as ever.

Because most developers don't bother to read Sun tutorials and books like "Filthy Rich Clients".

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#58

Post by pjmlp »

egocentric wrote: post #5
des429 wrote: post #2

Jesus. definitely looks like a swing app

Definitely got that swing feeling to it :) Is there any way to customize the theme? I'd love something that's more clean and looks more modern.

Yes, there are several ways to custom paint, hence why there were several companies selling components like JGoodies.

The problem is that most devs don't bother to read the Sun tutorials and respective UI/UX blogs on java.net, or books like "Filthy Rich Clients".

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#59

Post by AlphaSite »

kiwee wrote: post #47
hasenj wrote: post #30

The other day there was a post recommending the use of JavaFX. I would really like to see a non-trivial app built on JavaFX in Kotlin, with the following properties: - Does not look ugly. - Is not composed of _merely_ OEM widgets. But includes custom elements, like one would normally see on websites (and by extension, Electron apps). - Is lightweight and response, not just in terms of CPU and RAM, but in terms of use…

I actually did with my company and anyway it was a bad decision. JavaFX and swing customization is really not easy and not well documented. JavaFX uses custom XML which make no sense to be honest when you want to do nice design. And it requires custom CSS too. Additionally, their design are bad(I mean their Java API). We spend a whole year making an app with it, at the end we decided move away from it, like the rest…

FX1 or FX2?

Re: Show HN: Hacker News desktop application in Kotlin/Swing

#60

Post by pjmlp »

jm547ster wrote: post #20
stevoski wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java Swing, with lots of manual tiny tweaks for fidelity.

Wow I had no idea, assumed it was JavaFX, it has a much nicer feel to it than the other 2 IDEs. Has Swing remained the same or has the API been overhauled since idk, SE6-ish around last I perused? NetBeans certainly has had a nice bit of a facelift last I saw of it. Eclipse I won’t say too much, looks like their splash screen is the only thing has had much of an overhaul.

Just tiny improvements, mostly bug fixes.

The secret is to read "Filthy Rich Clients" and "Tricks of Swing Gurus", where most of those programming knobs were described.

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