Albireo Release Notes

Alpha Release

Here is the release (source + binary): Albireo-alpha.zip. You can install it into an Eclipse installation (simply unzip it in the Eclipse installation, in the directory that contains the eclipse executable and the plugins/ directory).

If you want to see its source code, you can "import" the plugin into a workspace (File > Import... > Plug-in Development > Plug-ins and Fragments; Import as: Projects with source folders). To get rid of errors related to "assert", set the Java compiler source level to at least 1.4.

Here is a set of examples and test cases: Albireo-examples.zip. You can import it into a workspace (File > Import... > General > Existing Projects into Workspace).

Prerequisites: Eclipse 3.3 or higher (probably 3.2 is enough as well); JRE 1.4 or higher, but our testing has focused on JRE 1.5 and 1.6, so either of those versions is highly recommended.

Initial Features

Synchronized Look and Feel. Where possible the Swing look and feel is changed to the native platform look and feel, so that the appearance of Swing components is consistent with SWT widgets. Fonts and colors are propagated from SWT when creating Swing components.

Resize flicker. Flicker while resizing Swing components is greatly reduced under Windows. This particular problem is not yet solved on other platforms.

Modal dialogs. SWT input is blocked while AWT modal dialogs are displayed.

Focus management. Tab traversal between Swing and SWT components is supported. Swing focus is maintained when clicking on a parent RCP view tab. Swing components can be activated with a single click. (In some cases, two clicks are needed when using the SWT_AWT bridge alone). On GTK, some problems remain with focus being stolen by Swing components when they are originally created.

Keystroke Contention. A conflict between Swing and the native windowing system when typing Shift-F10 is resolved.

Size/Layout Management. The preferred sizes of Swing components are respected in SWT layouts. Changes to the size of the containing SWT composite are propagated to the embedded Swing component. There are some remaining problems with usage of the SWT.BORDER style.

Popup Menus. SWT popup menus can be assigned to most Swing components through an API. Swing popup menus are properly dismissed when a SWT menu is opened. (This works with one exception: opening the system menu in the upper left hand corner of the window does not dismiss an open Swing dialog)