Sun removed the Swing Application Framework from Java 7

I think on Habré there are many developers who are somehow connected with such technology as SWING. Recently, I read the news, meaning the uncertainty of its future existence, and was surprised that nothing was written here. Therefore - we read.

Sun has discontinued the development of the JSR 296 standard: Swing Application Framework ( SAF ), which is part of Java 7. Here is how Alexander Potochkin writes about this in his blog :

After lengthy discussions, it became obvious that the Swing Application Framework API, as it is now, does not satisfy the requirements, and we realize that our work on it is not yet finished. From the moment the SAF API was added to the fifth update of JDK7, we realized that it was impossible to return everything as it was, we had to eventually remove the SAF from all versions of JDK 7.

In version 5, in accordance with the plan, only two new components were added in time: this is a cryptosystem based on elliptic curves and Swing JXLayer. As a result of this, Sun had to combine the 5th and 6th updates, moving the deadline for delivering the 5th update until October 29th. Only after this, the fifth update was complete, including new features from Project Coin , JXDatePicker for Swing, as well as updates related to JAXP, JAXB and JAX-WS API, which added to the Java XML technology group, making them more stable. Following the update plan, Sun plans to release 14 more versions from the end of October, ending work on them by February 2010.
From the moment Potochkin made his statement, at least two branches of the project ( BSAF , SAFF ) were deployed. Here is how Jonathan Giles expressed his opinion on this in his blog :

From the original SAF project, whose demands for help were never heard (at least from Sun, no visible actions were visible), we arrived at two new developments. Of course, if we could turn back time, at that stage when JSR-296 was only included in JDK 7, we could not do it, but the time was lost and the idea was ruined, so we would probably have to wait for JDK 8 before the swing framework is included in the release.

Later, Gills sent a letter to the SAF mailing list , in which he offered to make a choice between two branches of the project, and, having stopped developing one, fully concentrate on the second.

Taking into account the opinion of the developers, we should choose one of the branches and name it SAF.next. The development of the second should be stopped immediately, so that no conflicts arise in the future.

Potochkin also told InfoQ that another very expected innovation, namely CSS support for Swing components, which could be included in the 5th update, will not appear in Java 7 in the future. This functionality is included in JavaFX, and Ethan Nicholas has created more than an elaborate prototype for Swing, which he wrote on his blog in the summer of 2008. He also wrote a guide and code that is available for download from the project’s website .

UPD: moved to JAVA blog