Tuning Java Swing apps for Mac OS X

tarkin writes "Sven Van Caekenberghe just finished a tutorial article, 'Tuning Java Swing applications for Mac OS X', that explains how to tune standard Java Swing applications to conform to the Mac OS X User Experience and make them virtually indistinguishable from native Mac OS X applications. Topics include handling basic Apple events, packaging applications, adding a custom icon, file dialogs, about boxes, preferences, customizing the menu bar, supporting Finder drag-and-drop, standard help, and basic multi-document support, as well as using MRJToolkit and MRJAppBuilder. The PDF of the article, as well as a Mac OS X disk image with a binary version of the two demo applications and the source code can downloaded from his home page."

My method of java development

[BoomerSooner]

For my apps (that are cross platform) I build the classes in java and the UI in whichever platform I'm using. This allows each program to look good on the intended platform. For Apple Cocoa (java) programming via the Interface Builder is a wonderful tool (and free to boot!). However, I'm not a big fan of Swing. It is very unresponsive on even the fastest systems and even though working with a program can be just as efficient, as all Mac OS 9 users can tell you OS X doesn't "feel" as fast. That is the perception of Java based programs (that aren't native compiled), they are just slow. Sun should really consider a non-backward compatible new set of UI components because Swing was just kiss and make up for AWT (painful beast). I hate the layout managers and building your own, while it is an option really doesn't help in quick development.

He's right.

[BoomerSooner]

Java is significantly faster on OS X than it is on Linux. It's my understanding the reason the Java versions lag a little behind is Apple helps optimize them to aid with the speed issues.

That being said, I just want a compiler that can build native apps with one code base. Yes I know C++ can "theoretically" do this, but not if you're trying to make it a true native app. I want to say build file menu and the compiler knows on apple it's integrated and on a PC it's got it's own menu interface, on linux you can choose how you want it laid out (SDI versus MDI).

This is the killer app for developers and I personally would pay several thousand for a development environment that could do this. I'll return to my pipe dream shortly.