Since this is a long weekend in the US I am taking the opportunity to spin out the next quarterly release of Insubstantial, the 6.3 or "Defender" release.

What is Insubstantial?

Insubstantial is a maintenance fork of some of Kirill Grouchnikov's swing based projects. Specifically Substance, Trident, Flamingo, and some supporting project. These are not Kirill's 'official' releases but he has expressed that he is unlikely to do any more official releases.

How do I get it?

The best way is to use them directly from the maven repository (via Gradle, Maven, Ant+Ivy, or other maven repository aware build tool). The group id is com.github.insubstantial. The artifacts are as follows:

trident [ jar | sources |javadoc ]

Trident Animation Library.

laf-plugin [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

A swing component enhancement framework.

laf-widget [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

Swing component enhancements.

substance [ jar | lite | tools | sources | javadoc ]

A custom look and feel for Swing.

flamingo [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

A Ribbon component and other supporting components.

substance-flamingo [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

Substance customizations to some Flamingo components.

substance-swingx [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

Substance customizations to some SwingX components.

What's Different?

A full bug list can be found at the github page. Some of the more interesting bugs:

• #18: Trident Animation Threads - If left alone long enough with nothing to do (about 60 seconds) the animation threads will shut down. This will allow for OSGi class unloading.
• #15: Inactive Title Captions - Some Skins now have a different coloring when frames are inactive or not focused.
• #14: Dialog Icons - JDialogs now have title pane icons (and an icon menu).
• #5: JRibbonFrame Captions - When the Quick Action Toolbar and Context Tab Header don't leave enought space, the title caption will move to the right of the context tab header if it helps.

Can I see it do stuff?

Soon. I'll add some demo links once I mess with the GitHub Pages.

What about me?

What about you? Well, being open source patches are always welcome! The code is being hosted at Github so forking, soing your own thing, and posting a pull request should be very easy. There's giant tasks to do, such as updating the look to match Office 2010 and Windows 7. Administrative tasks, such as making the existing web content work on github. And creative tasks, sush as creating new color schemes and skins.

What's on the horizon?

I am bumping the next version number to 7.0 and it's code name is 'Unconquered.' I will track any bugs that make things break in Java 7. Right now I don't know of any breakage (know any? Tell Me). I also plan on looking into supporting some JDK7 features, such as translucent windows (rounded corners anyone?) and re-jiggering some of the jars contents (such as not bundling laf-widget and laf-plugin). I've also seen some early work from Erich Schroeter on a fluent builder for the Ribbon. that should hopefully make it in. The tenative date is early October 2011.

Until later [insert witty postscript here]

After much hoop jumping, I am pleased to announce that Substance 6.2 (codename Invincible) has been pushed to the Maven Central repositories. This is a maven only release (meaning I am not spinning any other distro jars).

What is Insubstantial?

Insubstantial is a maintenance fork of some of Kirill Grouchnikov's swing based projects. Specifically Substance, Trident, Flamingo, and some supporting project. These are not Kirill's 'official' releases but he has expressed that he is unlikely to do any more official releases.

How do I get it?

The best way is to use them directly from the maven repository (via Gradle, Maven, Ant+Ivy, or other maven repository aware build tool). The group id is com.github.insubstantial. For all of the released projects the version is 6.2. This is a bit of office 6.0 version bumping, but it makes it easier to determine which jars are meant to run with each other.

The artifact names are the same as the original project. I had contemplated renaming them, but after messing with numerous JNLPs decided it was better for compatibility if the jar names were as close as possible to the original jars. The artifacts are as follows:

trident [ jar | sources |javadoc ]

Trident Animation Library.

laf-plugin [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

A swing component enhancement framework.

laf-widget [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

Swing component enhancements.

substance [ jar | lite | tools | sources | javadoc ]

A custom look and feel for Swing.

flamingo [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

A Ribbon component and other supporting components.

substance-flamingo [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

Substance customizations to some Flamingo components.

substance-swingx [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

Substance customizations to some SwingX components.

What's Different?

Not a whole lot code wise or feature wise was added in this release.

• Gradle - the codebase has been adjusted to use Gradle as the build system. This has allowed for seampless deployment into the maven repositories. For Trident, laf-plugin, and substance-swingx this represents the entirity of the changes
• Maven Distribution - this deserves it's own bullet point. The jars are available from day one in the maven repositories.
• NPE Bugs - most of the code changes are to deal with possible null pointer exceptions. No one in their right mind would use a JTable as a table cell renderer, but it does happen in the wild.
• Flamingo API addition - a patch from Jonathan Gileswas applied to allow commands to be removed from the ribbon.
• Java 7 fixes - there is a bug fix in Java's Color Choosers that broke substance 6.1. This is fixed in Substance 6.2, so it should run on Java 7 now!

Can I see it do stuff?

Yes you can, there are several JNLP demos that I have managed to stand up over at github.

• Trident -
  Watch the button text slowly change color. (I do mean slowly.) [Source]
  Self-running fireworks. [Source]
  Blue progress cylon. [Source]
  Blocks light up and fade chasing your mouse cursor. [Source]
  Stars light up and fade following your mouse cursor. Sorry, no unicorns. [Source]

• Substance and Flamingo -
  A hodgepodge of Widgets
  A Ribbon Demo.

What about me?

What about you? Well, being open source patches are always welcome! The code is being hosted at Github so forking, soing your own thing, and posting a pull request should be very easy. There's giant tasks to do, such as updating the look to match Office 2010 and Windows 7. Administrative tasks, such as making the existing web content work on github. And creative tasks, sush as creating new color schemes and skins. In a couple weeks I'll figure out what I intend to do, and also some ideas for those who might want to congribute but don't know where to start.

Until later [insert witty postscript here]

After much hoop jumping, I am pleased to announce that Substance 6.2 (codename Invincible) has been pushed to the Maven Central repositories. This is a maven only release (meaning I am not spinning any other distro jars).

What is Insubstantial?

Insubstantial is a maintenance fork of some of Kirill Grouchnikov's swing based projects. Specifically Substance, Trident, Flamingo, and some supporting project. These are not Kirill's 'official' releases but he has expressed that he is unlikely to do any more official releases.

How do I get it?

The best way is to use them directly from the maven repository (via Gradle, Maven, Ant+Ivy, or other maven repository aware build tool). The group id is com.github.insubstantial. For all of the released projects the version is 6.2. This is a bit of office 6.0 version bumping, but it makes it easier to determine which jars are meant to run with each other.

The artifact names are the same as the original project. I had contemplated renaming them, but after messing with numerous JNLPs decided it was better for compatibility if the jar names were as close as possible to the original jars. The artifacts are as follows:

trident [ jar | sources |javadoc ]

Trident Animation Library.

laf-plugin [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

A swing component enhancement framework.

laf-widget [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

Swing component enhancements.

substance [ jar | lite | tools | sources | javadoc ]

A custom look and feel for Swing.

flamingo [ jar | lite | sources | javadoc ]

A Ribbon component and other supporting components.

substance-flamingo [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

Substance customizations to some Flamingo components.

substance-swingx [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

Substance customizations to some SwingX components.

What's Different?

Not a whole lot code wise or feature wise was added in this release.

• Gradle - the codebase has been adjusted to use Gradle as the build system. This has allowed for seampless deployment into the maven repositories. For Trident, laf-plugin, and substance-swingx this represents the entirity of the changes
• Maven Distribution - this deserves it's own bullet point. The jars are available from day one in the maven repositories.
• NPE Bugs - most of the code changes are to deal with possible null pointer exceptions. No one in their right mind would use a JTable as a table cell renderer, but it does happen in the wild.
• Flamingo API addition - a patch from Jonathan Gileswas applied to allow commands to be removed from the ribbon.
• Java 7 fixes - there is a bug fix in Java's Color Choosers that broke substance 6.1. This is fixed in Substance 6.2, so it should run on Java 7 now!

Can I see it do stuff?

Yes you can, there are several JNLP demos that I have managed to stand up over at github.

• Trident -
  Watch the button text slowly change color. (I do mean slowly.) [Source]
  Self-running fireworks. [Source]
  Blue progress cylon. [Source]
  Blocks light up and fade chasing your mouse cursor. [Source]
  Stars light up and fade following your mouse cursor. Sorry, no unicorns. [Source]

• Substance and Flamingo -
  A hodgepodge of Widgets
  A Ribbon Demo.

What about me?

What about you? Well, being open source patches are always welcome! The code is being hosted at Github so forking, soing your own thing, and posting a pull request should be very easy. There's giant tasks to do, such as updating the look to match Office 2010 and Windows 7. Administrative tasks, such as making the existing web content work on github. And creative tasks, sush as creating new color schemes and skins. In a couple weeks I'll figure out what I intend to do, and also some ideas for those who might want to congribute but don't know where to start.

Until later [insert witty postscript here]

After much hoop jumping, I am pleased to announce that Substance 6.2 (codename Invincible) has been pushed to the Maven Central repositories. This is a maven only release (meaning I am not spinning any other distro jars).

What is Insubstantial?

Insubstantial is a maintenance fork of some of Kirill Grouchnikov's swing based projects. Specifically Substance, Trident, Flamingo, and some supporting project. These are not Kirill's 'official' releases but he has expressed that he is unlikely to do any more official releases.

How do I get it?

The best way is to use them directly from the maven repository (via Gradle, Maven, Ant+Ivy, or other maven repository aware build tool). The group id is org.github.insubstantial. For all of the released projects the version is 6.2. This is a bit of office 6.0 version bumping, but it makes it easier to determine which jars are meant to run with each other.

The artifact names are the same as the original project. I had contemplated renaming them, but after messing with numerous JNLPs decided it was better for compatibility if the jar names were as close as possible to the original jars. The artifacts are as follows:

trident [ jar | sources |javadoc ]

Trident Animation Library.

laf-plugin [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

A swing component enhancement framework.

laf-widget [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

Swing component enhancements.

substance [ jar | lite | tools | sources | javadoc ]

A custom look and feel for Swing.

flamingo [ jar | lite | sources | javadoc ]

A Ribbon component and other supporting components.

substance-flamingo [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

Substance customizations to some Flamingo components.

substance-swingx [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

Substance customizations to some SwingX components.

What's Different?

Not a whole lot code wise or feature wise was added in this release.

• Gradle - the codebase has been adjusted to use Gradle as the build system. This has allowed for seampless deployment into the maven repositories. For Trident, laf-plugin, and substance-swingx this represents the entirity of the changes
• Maven Distribution - this deserves it's own bullet point. The jars are available from day one in the maven repositories.
• NPE Bugs - most of the code changes are to deal with possible null pointer exceptions. No one in their right mind would use a JTable as a table cell renderer, but it does happen in the wild.
• Flamingo API addition - a patch from Jonathan Gileswas applied to allow commands to be removed from the ribbon.
• Java 7 fixes - there is a bug fix in Java's Color Choosers that broke substance 6.1. This is fixed in Substance 6.2, so it should run on Java 7 now!

Can I see it do stuff?

Yes you can, there are several JNLP demos that I have managed to stand up over at github.

• Trident -
  Watch the button text slowly change color. (I do mean slowly.) [Source]
  Self-running fireworks. [Source]
  Blue progress cylon. [Source]
  Blocks light up and fade chasing your mouse cursor. [Source]
  Stars light up and fade following your mouse cursor. Sorry, no unicorns. [Source]

• Substance and Flamingo -
  A hodgepodge of Widgets
  A Ribbon Demo.

What about me?

What about you? Well, being open source patches are always welcome! The code is being hosted at Github so forking, soing your own thing, and posting a pull request should be very easy. There's giant tasks to do, such as updating the look to match Office 2010 and Windows 7. Administrative tasks, such as making the existing web content work on github. And creative tasks, sush as creating new color schemes and skins. In a couple weeks I'll figure out what I intend to do, and also some ideas for those who might want to congribute but don't know where to start.

Until later [insert witty postscript here]

After much hoop jumping, I am pleased to announce that Substance 6.2 (codename Invincible) has been pushed to the Maven Central repositories. This is a maven only release (meaning I am not spinning any other distro jars).

What is Insubstantial?

Insubstantial is a maintenance fork of some of Kirill Grouchnikov's swing based projects. Specifically Substance, Trident, Flamingo, and some supporting project. These are not Kiriil's 'official' releases but he has express that he is unlikely to do any more official releases.

How do I get it?

The best way is to use them directly from the maven repository (via Gradle, Maven, Ant+Ivy, or other maven repository aware build tool). The group id is org.github.insubstantial. For all of the released projects the version is 6.2. This is a bit of office 6.0 version bumping, but it makes it easier to determine which jars are meant to run with each other.

The artifact names are the same as the original project. I had contemplated renaming them, but after messing with numerous JNLPs decided it was better for compatibility if the jar names were as close as possible to the original jars. The artifacts are as follows:

trident [ jar | sources |javadoc ]

Trident Animation Library.

laf-plugin [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

A swing component enhancement framework.

laf-widget [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

Swing component enhancements.

substance [ jar | lite | tools | sources | javadoc ]

A custom look and feel for Swing.

flamingo [ jar | lite | sources | javadoc ]

A Ribbon component and other supporting components.

substance-flamingo [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

Substance customizations to some Flamingo components.

substance-swingx [ jar | sources | javadoc ]

Substance customizations to some SwingX components.

What's Different?

Not a whole lot code wise or feature wise was added in this release.

• Gradle - the codebase has been adjusted to use Gradle as the build system. This has allowed for seampless deployment into the maven repositories. For Trident, laf-plugin, and substance-swingx this represents the entirity of the changes
• Maven Distribution - this deserves it's own bullet point. The jars are available from day one in the maven repositories.
• NPE Bugs - most of the code changes are to deal with possible null pointer exceptions. No one in their right mind would use a JTable as a table cell renderer, but it does happen in the wild.
• Flamingo API addition - a patch from Jonathan Gileswas applied to allow commands to be removed from the ribbon.
• Java 7 fixes - there is a bug fix in Java's Color Choosers that broke substance 6.1. This is fixed in Substance 6.2, so it should run on Java 7 now!

Can I see it do stuff?

Yes you can, there are several JNLP demos that I have managed to stand up over at github.

• Trident -
  Watch the button text slowly change color. (I do mean slowly.) [Source]
  Self-running fireworks. [Source]
  Blue progress cylon. [Source]
  Blocks light up and fade chasing your mouse cursor. [Source]
  Stars light up and fade following your mouse cursor. Sorry, no unicorns. [Source]

• Substance and Flamingo -
  A hodgepodge of Widgets
  A Ribbon Demo.

What about me?

What about you? Well, being open source patches are always welcome! The code is being hosted at Github so forking, soing your own thing, and posting a pull request should be very easy. There's giant tasks to do, such as updating the look to match Office 2010 and Windows 7. Administrative tasks, such as making the existing web content work on github. And creative tasks, sush as creating new color schemes and skins. In a couple weeks I'll figure out what I intend to do, and also some ideas for those who might want to congribute but don't know where to start.

Until later [insert witty postscript here]