Re: [gui-dev] Java Toolkit used with Limewire 4

Swing really isn't that terrible -- especially on newer versions of 
Java.  Of course, GUI creation with Swing is geared towards 
programmers, not artists.  That, in and of itself, leads to GUIs that 
aren't too good looking.  Programmers that write UIs tend to do it with 
themselves in mind, rather than with other users.  Luckily, we have 
Aubrey here at LimeWire, an honest-to-goodness designer, who has helped 
us make LimeWire look fairly simple & stay easy to use.  There's a 
bunch more plans in store for making the GUI look even better & be even 
easier to use.

On the coding side of things, we've worked very hard to keep the core 
activities & GUI display separate.  That has helped to keep the event 
thread (the thread which does all the drawing) as fast as possible.  
We've written a lot of custom extensions to Swing components that have 
helped to keep the components acting as a user would expect.

That said, Swing has a ways to go before it can be put together Visual 
Basic-like and 'just work'.  One of the great things about it now, 
though, is the flexibility and power it offers -- such as allowing 
LimeWire to look like a Windows program on Windows & an OSX program on 
OSX, just by plugging in a different L&F, and requiring zero code 
changes.

Thanks,
  Sam

On Saturday, July 24, 2004, at 11:19  AM, Fred wrote:

> Jens-Uwe Mager a e'crit :
>> On Sat, Jul 24, 2004 at 14:18 +0000, Fred wrote:
>>> What's the Java Toolkit used to run Limewire ? I Thing you're using 
>>> SWING as I think I've seen in the code,
>>> but I've always been told that SWING was a bit slow, and that user 
>>> responsiveness was pretty bad etc in comparison with IBM's SWT.
>>>
>>> I know Azureus/Bittorent, which is very fast, has been built with 
>>> SWT but Limewire's performance are quiet equivalent.
>>>
>>> So what's the truth ?
>> It is all Swing, nothing special here with the small exception for 
>> some
>> native code for special features like the Windows System Tray.
> Then Limewire show that SWING applications can be fast enough and that 
> the look and feel UI
> is not that bad, it's even quiet good !
>
> Gook work guys
>
> Fred
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