AboutPanel

Most applications want to show basic information about themselves, such as what version they are and when they were published, etc. Rather than rewriting the UI code for this for each new application, wouldn't it be nice if you could simply populate an instance of an AboutInfo POJO and hand it to some utility that would generate the UI for you in a consistent way? Well, now there is!

Basic usage

AboutInfo contains many fields, most of which are optional. If an optional field is not specified, it will not be included in the resulting dialog or panel. Here's an example of setting up an AboutInfo instance for a fictional application:

AboutInfo aboutInfo = new AboutInfo();
aboutInfo.license = "https://opensource.org/license/mit";
aboutInfo.copyright = "Copyright © 2025 Your Name Here";
aboutInfo.projectUrl = "https://example.com/MyAmazingProject";
aboutInfo.applicationName = "My Amazing Project";
aboutInfo.applicationVersion = "1.0.0";
aboutInfo.shortDescription = "This project will change the world...";

Now, we can hand this AboutInfo object to an AboutPanel or to an AboutDialog:

new AboutDialog(myMainWindow, aboutInfo).setVisible(true);

About1

We see a logo image was automatically generated for us, because we didn't specify one, and we see that the links to our project URL and license URL were automatically made clickable (if the JRE supports desktop browsing). We also note that JVM memory usage stats were added automatically.

But this dialog looks a little plain. Can we improve it a bit? Yes, we can...

Customizing the logo image

The default generated logo image looks a bit bland, but we're seeing that because we didn't specify one of our own. Let's hire a graphic designer to come up with something more visually interesting, and then we can specify it in our AboutInfo:

aboutInfo.logoImageLocation = "/myapp/images/logo.jpg";

About2

Looks better! The logo image is recommended to be around 480x90 pixels, but you can experiment to see what works. You can also look at AboutInfo.LogoDisplayMode to learn about how the logo image can be positioned on the form.

Let's continue customizing the dialog for our application:

Specifying release notes

Another common use of an About dialog is to show the application release notes. With AboutInfo, you can either specify these as a text file in your resources somewhere, or just as a text string:

// Option 1: inline text:
String releaseNotes = "RELEASE NOTES:\n\n"
                + "v1.0.0 - Initial release!\n";
aboutInfo.releaseNotesText = releaseNotes;

// OR Option 2: specify a resource file:
aboutInfo.releaseNotesLocation = "/myapp/releaseNotes.txt";

About3

If both options are specified, releaseNotesText will be used and releaseNotesLocation will be ignored. If either option is specified, a read-only text area will appear on the dialog, with a scrollbar if needed. Line wrapping is done automatically as needed, or "\n" can be used for manual newlines.

Adding custom fields

Often it's nice to be able to supply custom information to the About dialog. This can be done in the form of name:value pairs of Strings:

aboutInfo.addCustomField("Messages received:", "10");
aboutInfo.addCustomField("Messages sent:", "4");

About4

We now see that our custom fields Messages sent and Messages received appear on the About dialog.

But these fields represent dynamic values that will change during the lifetime of the application. Can we change them once they are set?

aboutInfo.updateCustomField("Messages received:", "99");
aboutInfo.updateCustomField("Messages sent:", "50");

About5

We see that the values have been updated. We can call updateCustomField whenever our custom field values change. Any AboutPanel or AboutDialog that is currently showing will be updated immediately, and any panel or dialog that is shown with that AboutInfo object from that point on will also reflect the latest values.

Panel vs Dialog

Sometimes, you may not want to show this information in the form of a popup dialog, but rather embedded somewhere within one of your application windows. You can use AboutPanel for this purpose instead of AboutDialog:

AboutPanel aboutPanel = new AboutPanel(aboutInfo);
myContainerPanel.add(aboutPanel);