JTF > New Features

New Features in the JTF Final Release

(August 25, 2006)

• A 90-page tutorial for prospective adopters (JTF Tutorial)

• Several new entries in the Demo Gallery including an implementation of the Marine Biology Simulation used as a case study for the CS Advanced Placement course.

• A new addArc method for approximating arcs within the GPolygon class (Rationale section 5.3)

• More extensive discussion of the distinction between the init and run methods in the Program class (Rationale section 6.3)

• Inclusion of a new addKeyListeners facility for key events that operates symmetrically with addMouseListeners (Rationale section 6.4)

• A substantial redesign of the ProgramMenuBar class, on top of the one made in the beta release (Rationale section 6.6)

• Inclusion of a SwingTimer class to support the use of timers without the name conflict (Rationale section 8.4)

• New facilities for controlling animations (Rationale section 8.5)

• Enhanced support for animation and interactivity (Tutorial chapter 3)

New Features in the JTF Beta Release

February 23, 2006

• A much expanded Demo Gallery

• A prototype online tutorial for the The acm.gui package

• A description of the feedback process after the initial draft (Rationale section 2.2)

• Range checking on input data (Rationale section 4.1)

• The GOval, GArc, and GRoundRect classes are now rendered as polygons by default (Rationale section 5.3)

• The mathematical functions for graphics are now in a separate class (Rationale section 5.4)

• The Color constants have now been eliminated from the GOobject class (Rationale section 5.4)

• Mouse events generated by GObjects are now handled much more efficiently (Rationale section 5.6)

• The layout discipline for the Program class has been improved to support adding standard interactors to the borders of a program window (Rationale section 6.5)

• The menu bar facility has been extensively redesigned (Rationale section 6.6)

• The Program facility uses a better strategy to identify the main class (Rationale section 6.7)

• The baseline Java version of the package has been upgraded to JDK 1.4. (Rationale section 6.9)

• We have adopted a much more robust strategy to ensure compatibility with older browsers (Rationale section 6.9)

• A new acm.gui package has been added to support graphical user interface (GUI) development (Rationale Chapter 7)

• The replacement Scanner class has been moved from the acm.util package to the compatibility framework (Rationale section 8.9)

Final Report—August 25, 2006