Surprisingly enough, I found out how to plug in a custom splash screen based on this post about user authentication and authorization.
Basically, one needs to write another start-up class, instead of the platform's default:
import java.lang.reflect.Method;
public class CustomStartup {
private static final String NB_MAIN_CLASS = "org.netbeans.core.startup.Main";
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
// do whatever you need here (e.g. show a custom login form)
System.out.println("Hello world! I am a custom startup class");
JWindow splash = initSplash();
// once you're done with that, hand control back to NetBeans
ClassLoader classloader = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader();
Class<?> mainClass = Class.forName(NB_MAIN_CLASS, true, classloader);
Object mainObject = mainClass.newInstance();
Method mainMethod = mainClass.getDeclaredMethod("main", new Class[]{String[].class});
mainMethod.invoke(mainObject, (Object) args);
splash.setVisible(false);
}
}
In that class, one can create a JavaFX stage, embed it into a JWindow, and show it:
public JWindow initSplash(){
JWindow window = new JWindow();
final JFXPanel fxPanel = new JFXPanel();
window.add(fxPanel);
window.setVisible(true);
window.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
Platform.runLater(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
Scene scene = new Scene(new CustomFxSplash(), 475, 300, true);
fxPanel.setScene(scene);
}
}
return window;
}
Other things to remember are:
Suppress the original NetBeans splash screen by running your app with the --nosplash parameter.
Call your custom initialization class by running your app with the -J-Dnetbeans.mainclass=com.package.splash.CustomStartup parameter
As the link suggests this custom class has to be on the platform's initialization classpath, meaning inside the platform/core folder.
