Nov 19 2010

JFormDesigner 4.0.9 and 5 Beta 3

We've just released JFormDesigner 4.0.9 and 5 Beta 3.

JFormDesigner 4.0.9

This release fixes minor bugs and brings some minor improvements. It now supports Java 7 EA.

See Change Log for details and download JFormDesigner 4.0.9.

JFormDesigner 5 Beta 3

Change Log:

  • Added property editor for string arrays.
  • I18n: Support localization of string arrays.
  • I18n: Externalization of forms from command-line.
  • Look and Feels: Added option "Enable Look and Feel switching" to "Look and Feels" preferences page, which allows you to disable Look and Feel switching if it causes problems.
  • Minor bugs fixed.

Please give it a try, download it and report bugs. Thanks.

2010-11-19 ,

Sep 20 2010

JFormDesigner 5 Beta 2

We've just released JFormDesigner 5 Beta 2. This second beta contains an important bugfix for the i18n support. Users that use JFormDesigner's great i18n features are recommended to update from the first beta.

Change Log:

  • I18n: Fixed generation of wrong resource bundle keys (since 5 Beta).
  • Minor bugs fixed.

Please give it a try, download it and report bugs. Thanks.

Customer information: JFormDesigner 5 is free of charge for existing customers if the "Free updates until" date of the license key is 2010-01-01 or later.

2010-09-20 1 Comments ,

Sep 10 2010

JFormDesigner 5 Beta

After hard (and long) work on the next major release of JFormDesigner, the first JFormDesigner 5 Beta build is finally available.

Major new features and improvements:

  • Beans Binding (JSR 295) support.
  • Project specific settings.
  • JGoodies Forms 1.3 support.
  • Properties view: Ability to filter properties.
  • Properties view: "Group by Category", "Group by Defining Type" and "Alphabetical" commands introduced.
  • Properties view: Moved "Code Generation" properties from own tab to category into properties table.
  • "Choose Bean" dialog now supports camel-case search.
  • Automatically reload custom components when changed.
  • Automatically refresh designers on project classpath changes.
  • Simplified handling of JScrollPanes: now you can select the child of a JScrollPane and change layout properties of the JScrollPane in the Properties view and using the context popup menu.
  • Eclipse plug-in: The Java code generator can now use the Eclipse code formatter to format generated code. Enable option "Use Eclipse code formatter" in "Java Code Generator" preferences.

For more new features and improvements see the change log.

Please give it a try, download it and report bugs. Thanks.

Customer information: JFormDesigner 5 is free of charge for existing customers if the "Free updates until" date of the license key is 2010-01-01 or later.

2010-09-10 2 Comments ,

Jul 22 2010

JFormDesigner IDE compatibility

Recently we blogged about JFormDesigner and Eclipse Helios (3.6) compatibility. This time we would like to give you some insight into how we test compatibility with IDEs.

Currently we provide JFormDesigner plug-ins for three IDEs: Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA and JBuilder. And soon, we'll support two additional IDEs: NetBeans and JDeveloper.

JFormDesigner 4.0.8 supports 48 IDE releases:

  • 16 Eclipse releases (3.1, 3.1.1, ..., 3.6)
  • 30 IntelliJ IDEA releases (5.1, 5.1.1, ..., 9.0.3)
  • 2 JBuilder releases (2005 and 2006)

In JFormDesigner 5 we'll reduce the number by 14 because we'll no longer support Eclipse 3.1, IntelliJ IDEA 5.1 - 6.0 and JBuilder 2005.

You can imagine that it is not an easy task to ensure compatibility with that many IDE releases. Besides testing, testing and testing, we use of course automated tests to check source code and binary compatibility:

  • Source code compatibility is checked by compiling the plug-in sources with all supported versions of the IDE libraries.
  • But this is not enough because the obfuscator may break binary compatibility. So we've developed an Ant task that checks whether the obfuscator has renamed methods, which should override (or implement) methods in an IDE superclass (or interface). This ensures binary compatibility.

2010-07-22 , , ,

Jun 29 2010

JFormDesigner and Eclipse Helios (3.6) compatibility

Congratulation to the Eclipse community for the recent release of Eclipse Helios (3.6).

It's great to see that Eclipse 3.6 is still API compatible to previous versions. This is not an easy task. But they did it. And we're happy about it because JFormDesigner 4.0.8 runs without any modification in Eclipse 3.6.

Even JFormDesigner 3 and 3.1 seems to run without problems, but we don't support officially Eclipse 3.6 for these old versions.

2010-06-29 ,