Ramblings of a coder

JavaFX currently doesn't have the built in ability to change the order of tabs by dragging them, neither does it have the ability to detach tabs into separate windows (like a lot of browsers do these days.) There is a general issue for improving TabPanes filed here , so if you'd like to see this sort of behaviour added in the main JavaFX libraries then go ahead and cast your vote, it would be a very welcome addition! However, as nice as this would be in the future, it's not here at the moment and it looks highly unlikely it'll be here for Java 8 either. I've seen a few brief attempts at reordering tabs in JavaFX, but very few examples on dragging them and nothing to do with detaching / reattaching them from the pane. Given this, I've decided to create a reusable class that should hopefully be as easy as possible to integrate into existing applciations - it extends from Tab, and for the most part you create it and use it like a normal tab (you can just add it...

Note: If you've read this guide already (or when you've read it) then going through all of it each time you want to rip something can be a bit of a pain, especially when you just need your memory jogging on one particular section. Because of that, I've put together a quick "cheat sheet" here  which acts as a handy reference just to jog your memory on each key step. I've seen a few guides around on ripping DVDs, but fewer for Blu-rays, and many miss what I believe are important steps (such as ensuring the correct foreign language subtitles are preserved!) While ripping your entire DVD collection would have seemed insane due to storage requirements even a few years ago, these days it can make perfect sense. This guide doesn't show you a one click approach that does all the work for you, it's much more of a manual process. But the benefits of putting a bit more effort in really do pay off - you get to use entirely free tools with no demo versions, it...

There's several annoyances I have with method names in the Java API - some are well documented as being ridiculous early design decisions that, well, couldn't be reverted without breaking backwards compatibility. Boolean.getBoolean() is a classic example for instance that really doesn't do what you'd expect. However, there's another which is more recent that I haven't really heard complained about anywhere else. It's not a deal breaker by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a bad name, and it is mildly annoying. I'm talking about the removeAll() method present on collection classes. It takes a collection of items to remove from that particular collection - pretty standard stuff. But to me, that should be called removeEach(),  removeAllOf(), or perhaps even just remove(), overloaded with the standard method that takes one parameter (to me the latter seems like the most logical choice.) The problem I have with removeAll() is that it sounds like...

I've been using JavaFX for a while now, in a couple of projects - for my PhD work, and on the side for Quelea (whose interface has been migrated entirely from Swing over to JavaFX.) As promised, I thought I'd post a few follow up thoughts - good points / bad points now that I've been using it a while. So, without further ado, the positives! The API is nice and clean - and not just because it's not stuffed with deprecated methods like Swing is, it's just designed in a fundamentally much more sensible way which makes it easier to follow. The concept of properties on elements, with these properties having a common interface, means I can jump right in with a component and see what properties are available to me without having to dig in the documentation to find out exactly how to add a listener for the width of the bottom half of my split pane (for instance.) Layout is vastly improved - a lot of the swing inconsistencies have gone, and the model is now a specific...

This code will no longer work! It uses the old v1 API, which has been turned off. See here for working code with the latest v2 API. As well as being useful as general cloud storage, dropbox also has an API that lets you access its contents programmatically. It's a straightforward REST API with a number of language specific libraries to make the going a bit easier. Java is included on the list of SDKs, but at present only Android is included on the list of tutorials. This can be somewhat frustrating because simple examples using Java are lacking. Fortunately, the process was described by Josh here . So I've taken it and implemented it in Java, and it seems to work. It's a very basic example that authenticates with dropbox then uploads a file called "testing.txt" containing "hello world." Of course, more functionality is available than this, but this is the hard part (at least I found working this bit out the hard part.) Once you've got your Dro...

When I first started Quelea, I wanted to use it as a kind of testing ground for features and ideas that hadn't already been incorporated into church presentation software. Both in terms of the UI, features and functionality. A lot of these features have worked really well - the ability to import from survivor songbooks for instance, and the instant search that's further improved in the next release. On the UI side of things I tried to have a go with the ribbon - it's still got a love/hate relationship with people, but I wondered if it could do any good in Quelea. So I had a go, implemented it and left it as such for a few releases. Thing is, it just didn't work - and I think this was a 50:50 split between it not being suitable for Quelea and the flamingo implementation. On the suitable for Quelea side: For something that's often run on laptops with small screens, it took up a huge amount of space it didn't need to. There weren't enough controls to make it vi...

You'll need an understanding of weak references to have a meaningful stab at this one. public class Test { public static void main(String[] args) { List<byte[]> list = new ArrayList<byte[]>(); Object thing = new Object(); WeakReference<Object> ref = new WeakReference<Object>(thing); while(ref.get()!=null) { list.add(new byte[10000]); } System.out.println("bam"); } } Before reading any further give it a stab, see what you come up with. Then run it and see. Oh and yes, it compiles and runs. ... Well, there's two possible options that you could have sensibly come up with. The first is what most people assume will always happen - the byte array will fill up to cause an OutOfMemoryError and the weak reference will never be garbage collected because there also exists a strong reference (thing) that remains in scope throughout the application and thus doesn't ...