Do you know what happens when you add a KeyListener to JFrame to capture global keystrokes? Nothing. Much to my frustration, I discovered recently that KeyEvents are not bubbled up through the JComponent hierarchy by default. The only component that consumes the event is the one currently focused.

Java 7’s recent release has sparked some interesting discussion, some excited by the new features, some disappointed that it’s too little too late… But this isn’t one of those internet rants about the future of Java; this is about using a language to its full extent!

Java 8 lies ahead and with it promises of native Collection support. But that’s a while away, we want it now! And with Espresso4J, a small language-augmenting library designed to put a shot of liveliness into Java syntax, we can have it now too.