DevLog 2 :Finishing Network Layer of the GUI framework.

himansa — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 19:14:32 +0000

this is a second DevLog of DevLogs of building a GUI Framework for java.

Today I started Implementing the framework after seeing Prototype seems to be success. and finished the Network Layer of it.

it is a abstraction around Rest and Web sockets that enable framework to jump between both communication protocols in the fly. simply, when building on top of it, we have one Logical Connection that can be either rest or web socket or both. and connection and disconnect events are also built around that logical connection, meaning they fire only if a new user connects or user closes last remaining Connection to server.

and the Network Layer Built to be swappable, so the framework implementation that build on top of this can be used without changing over any type of Network Layer. Currently I created Jetty Based Network Implementation and Mock Implementation for later testing needs.

for a Example, current Api of Network Layer looks like this.

NetworkServer server = new JettyNetworkServer(8080);

server.onConnect(client -> {
    System.out.println("Connected: " + client.id());
    System.out.println("Type: " + client.currentType());
});

server.onDisconnect(client -> {
    System.out.println("Disconnected: " + client.id());
});

server.onRequest((client, request) -> {
    if ("ping".equals(request.getCode())) {
        return DataResponse.ok()
                .command("message", "pong");
    }

    if ("echo".equals(request.getCode())) {
        DataResponse response = DataResponse.ok();

        if (request.getData() != null) {
            request.getData().forEach(response::command);
        }

        return response;
    }

    return DataResponse.error(404, "unknown code");
});

server.start();

this mostly won't be exposed from Framework Api. but since this is isolated and independent from the framework, this can be used separately for any other project that need to keep one logical user connection no matter client changes their communication protocol in mid session.

Building a new GUI Framework for java

himansa — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 07:55:01 +0000

Excited to talk about my new experiment,
A GUI framework for Java.

For a while, I felt the need for a good GUI framework for Java. We currently have some solid GUI frameworks, but they seem limiting. And most are also hard to work with for dynamic UIs and styling.

So, I tried to make one. And it kind of succeeded. My model was creating an Instruction Engine that controls Web UI. The web UI can be a WebView, web browser, or something that supports DOM and JS, without the network tax of server-side rendering and also keeping the flexibility of the web.

I'm still refining the architecture, but current prototypes already satisfy me. Briefly explaining, the developer workflow is much like either loading an HTML file or coding Swing/FX-like GUI code, then binding events using consumers, creating animations using a type-safe DSL of CSS, while raw CSS support is also available. This is an example code of a ClickMe app for reference:

Panel bg = new Panel("pnlBg");
bg.setStyle(Layouts.FlexColumn().gap(5));

InputText fName 
            = new InputText("fName","Name...");
Button clickMe 
            = new Button("btn","Click Me");

clickMe.onClick((d)-> 
{
    String inp = d.getString().GetOrElse("");
    clickMe.setText("Hello "+inp);
},
fName.q("name").value(Validators.NotEmpty()));

bg.addChild(fName,clickMe);
window.setView(bg);

Or:

window.setSource("./index.html");

Button.of("btn").onClick((d)-> 
{
    String inp = d.getString().GetOrElse("");
    Button.of("btn").setText("Hello "+inp);
},
InputText.of("fName").q("name").value(Validators.NotEmpty()));

While index.html is a normal HTML file.

This is some of the prototype. Also, the button component mostly has 20 lines of code including all Java boilerplate; custom components can also be defined.
Also, there is no hardcoded web renderer for this; anything is an implementation of an 8-method interface communication bridge away. Currently, there are implementations for JavaFX WebView and multi-user stateful server through URL.

I hope that I can bring this to the finish line. Currently, I am refining the architecture to be swappable and scalable. I will add screenshots of some example apps I made using this.

I'd also love to hear feedback, ideas, suggestions, critiques, or anything from everyone 🙂.

Attachments:

Simple Login WebView-based Password Vault (yeah i still fixing Unicode rendering)

Dashboard of Password Vault

Simple todo app with styling

Simple file listing app on web with navigation

GUI designer for framework using framework

Markdown IDE with Live preview, Ace editor

Directly changing a live website

All apps here support both dark/white themes without much setup. Also, every application's rendering target (browser/WebView) can be changed without changing inner logic.

DEV Community: himansa

DevLog 2 :Finishing Network Layer of the GUI framework.

Building a new GUI Framework for java