First real post

OK, so here is the first real post of this blog. Humm, but about what ? OK, let's dive in.

As you surely don't know, I created an open source project on java.net called MDIFramework. This is a full java framework for easing the creation of multithreaded swing applications.

When you create an application, you soon discover that :

• you need to execute the lengthy methods in separate threads to avoid "freezing" of the GUI, but then, it quickly becomes a nightmare to deal correctly with the communication between the main event thread, an even using SwingWorker is not enough (for example, what to do if you want to be sure that two actions launched by the user will be executed one after another, for example ?)


• You would like to ease the configuration of the application, an store it in the most automatic way when you close


• You want to deal with several types of files in the application, each providing different possible actions, so you would like to have some sort of metadatas associated with each opened file


• And what if you want to be able to use easily plugin with your application ?

So as I always copied and pasted the same sort of code to do the things above, I created this framework.

If you are interested, go check to tutorials here.

By the way, JSR 296 is already an upcoming Java JSR that aim to provide a simple application framework for Swing applications. I did not knew that when I created my project (but also JSR 296 is still very young), but I think that what this JSR provides (you can check the still evolving open source implementation here) is different. I should try it, and maybe add some JSR 296 capabilities to my own framework... (yes I know, why recreating the wheel when it is already existing ?).