swing-playground

📚 Learning and exploring Swing, the GUI widget toolkit for Java.

Overview

It's 2023 and we're learning Swing? It's hard to believe, but while Swing is not winning any awards, it is a rock solid functional GUI toolkit that powers applications like the JetBrains IDEs.

Swing is not even the most deployed Java-based GUI widget toolkit: that accollade goes to the Android ecosystem.

I pretty much just need to know Swing so that I can debug, extend and create Intellij plugins.

Instructions

Follow these instructions to build and run the demo Swing-based desktop GUI program.

1. Pre-requisite: Java 17
2. Build and run the program:

   • ./gradlew run

3. A window will appear
   • Type in the name of a class, like java.util.List
   • Click the "Search" button
   • The program will look up the class and display its public methods in the window

Wish List

General clean-ups, TODOs and things I wish to implement for this project:

• Incorporate FlatLaf
• Style the window much better.
• Make multiple different subprojects. I'm not sure exactly what I need to explore, but Intellij plugin development will give me some ideas.
• Consider using Kotlin as a way to compare and contrast. I think GUI object-oriented/application/widget code can be especially verbose so Kotlin might be a good fit.
• Do something with a non-main thread (the non Event Dispatch Thread (EDT)) to see how that makes you write Swing code differently.

Reference

• JavaDoc: package javax.swing
• FlatLaf - Swing Look and Feel (with Darcula/IntelliJ themes support)
• The Java Tutorials: Trail: Creating a GUI With Swing