SpringGUI

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Download SpringGUI 001

This is the first release of SpringGUI (June 2005). SpringGUI can be copied and distributed freely, however if you modify its source code, you have to release and identify your modifications under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

Since this is the first release and I only rarely have access to systems other than Windows, there are a few issues left to be resolved. For a description of known issues, see the list below. If you find something else to be at fault or want to make general comments, please contact me at philipp@repeatwhiletrue.com (after having read the FAQ, of course. :) ).

known bugs and issues with SpringGUI
    - The user interface elements have an opaque background.
This is not a bug in SpringGUI but a general problem with java's heavyweight awt components for which I don't believe a workaround exists. The problem appears for example with OSX' rounded buttons which have a visible background and are not transparently laid over the processing canvas. The workaround for this is to position your GUI elements prudently and over a region of a common single color background, then to set the elements' background colors to this color.
MacOS generally does not seem to be quite consistent about the way it handles GUI elements. Buttons are an example for things that look different in different JRE versions, and occasionally, elements quickly flash a bright border, when they receive events. If you're working on a Windows system and want to design your Processing applications to be as cross-platform/cross-JRE as possible, make them a little larger than seems necessary and leave a bit of extra space around them. Backgrounds of Buttons behave funnily in that some versions of the JRE draw them in grey no matter what color you specify. Still, you can and should use background colors to match elements that you'd normally expect to be transparent, to a single color background.
I expect to be able to work these things out when I get some more time to tinker with MacOS X, probably until the end of the month.

    - Pressing Buttons with the keyboard instead of clicking them with the mouse won't fire an event.
It's high up on the to-do list and will be fixed soon.

    - There is no way of controlling the order in which the elements receive focus when the user tabs through them using the keyboard.

    - On MacOS with Safari, I sometimes encountered the Applet initialising with a messed up interface. When I hit reload, everything works nicely.
I'll put some research into that as soon as I get another opportunity of working on a Mac.

installation instructions
Download the SpringGUI 001 zip archive and extract the files to a temporary folder. Copy the subfolder SpringGUI into Processing's libraries folder. You may need to restart Processing in order for the library to work. The zip file also contains the complete reference and examples for offline reading.

If you wish to experiment with the source code to SpringGUI, you can download it here. This zip file also contains documentation in the form of javadocs (not a recommended reference for beginners, but if you feel comfortable using them, there they are).


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