Griffon has a strong MVC focus, and functionality is built using MVC groups. This is not a screen or a form, an MVC group is a piece of functionality, and a single form is made of MVC groups composed together. The way MVC groups talk to each other is through an event bus, rather than being coupled directly to each other.

I created a screencast that demonstrates these concepts in just under 7 minutes. In the video, I create an app, create several MVC groups, and then wire them together with the event bus.

If the video doesn’t play correctly, you may want to launch it from the JetBrains.tv site. Also, if you want to be nice then you can upvote this at DZone.

Boom. Winning.

If you like this, you can check out my other screencasts on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/HamletDRC) or JetBrains.tv (http://tv.jetbrains.net/tags/hamlet)

If you want written documentation on these topics, then please read:
* The Griffon RefCard – http://refcardz.dzone.com/refcardz/getting-started-griffon
* The Griffon User Guide – http://dist.codehaus.org/griffon/guide/index.html
* The Griffon Main Site – http://griffon.codehaus.org/

Big Griffon news today.

First, the Griffon Refcard is available from DZone. This is a concise 6-page reference to getting started and working with Griffon. If the only thing you know about Griffon is that it is a Grails and Groovy based framework for building desktop applications, then this RefCard will fill you in with tons more details. And if you’re an old Griffon hack, then you’ll probably still pick up some new tips and tricks.

Plus, DZone published an interview with Canooie Andres Almiray, the Griffon project lead. You can read the interview here, or click the RefCard below to download the card.

Anyone interested in Griffon in the Swiss area should come out to Hackergarten on the 30th of July. Several experienced Griffon developers will be present including Andres. And there is free pizza!

Once again a group of Canooies and Friends joined together on a Friday night to write open source code and contribute back to the software community. By any measure, the April Hackergarten was a large success!

The group developed and released 3 Plugins to the Griffon Framework, an open source Groovy and Swing desktop application framework. The plugins were:

• JTreeMap – An interesting take on tree visualizations based around the JTreeMap component.
• Notify – A perennial hackergarten favorite, this adds nice alpha blended desktop announcements to Ubuntu, Windows, and MacOSX.
• Oxbow – A mature project to standardize common task dialogs, an area Microsoft excels in but Java is just catching up with.

We also got a good start on a 4th plugin (DockingFrames), but there was just too much work to do and we’ll try to finish and release in the next few weeks.

Griffon Project Lead (and Canooie) Andres Almiray already blogged his thoughts about the night. Here is what some other participants are saying:

I learned a lot about Griffon plugin system. never thought how easy plugin developement for Griffon is. Also learned some more stuff about git and about using Intellij IDEA with griffon.
Rene Groeschke

At Hackergarten I learned how easy and fun the development of a standalone application can be using Griffon. In just a few steps you are able to get something working, avoiding the painful process of setting up a build tool. I liked the use of the pomodoro technique during the evening, when used in team it helps avoiding that only one developer is doing all the steering.
Francesco Durbin

It’s amazing to see what you can achieve spending just a few hours in hackergarten: Before the last event Griffon was completely unknown to me – now I am an official contributor of that project. And besides that I had a great evening with beer and pizza and some nice people.
Christoph Lipp

The second Hackergarten was great! Not only did I learn Griffon, I had the best teacher in the world, project lead Andres Almiray himself! Working together with such talented people, as Hackergarten brings together, is sheer joy. Actually contributing to the open source community, seeing your stuff used by others, is just cream on top! I can’t wait until the next Hackergarten!
Per Junel

The next two Hackergarten nights are on the road. If you’d like to join the fun then swing by or join the mailing list:

• 19 May – GR8 Conference Copenhagen
• 2 June – Jazoon Conference Zurich