Swing Hacks

408

Chapter 11

C H A P T E R E L E V E N

Native Integration

and Packaging

Hacks 79–87

You can try really hard to develop a desktop application that looks good,

feels right, and meets the user’s needs, but if a Windows or Mac user has to

drop down to a command line and type

java -jar MyCoolApp.jar to run it,

it’s not going to win you any points in the user experience department.

There are points of integration with the native platform that you’ll often

want and need to access from a Swing application, or specific functionality

you’ll want to provide on a platform-by-platform basis, and that’s what this

chapter is about.

Actually, this chapter was almost rendered irrelevant by the

JDesktop Integration Components (JDIC) project on Java.net

(https://jdic.dev.java.net/), which is addressing the most seri-

ous needs for desktop Java applications: creating platform-

appropriate double-clickables, providing access to the native

web browser component, associating Java applications with

certain kinds of documents, etc. JDIC may solve some of the

biggest issues facing Java on the desktop…which leaves us all

the more room for creative hackery.

H A C K

#79

Launch External Programs on Windows Hack #79

With one simple command you can tell Windows to open files, directories,

and URLs on your behalf.

Swing programmers have always had difficulty dealing with native operat-

ing systems because of Java’s cross-platform nature. Even simple things like

opening a web browser require building native hooks with JNI or building

on top of custom libraries. This hack will show you how to open files,

URLs, and start an email app without using any native libraries or custom C

coding.