| About Metalworks |
| ================ |
| Metalworks is a simple Swing-based simulated e-mail |
| application. It shows off several features of Swing, including |
| JInternalFrame, JTabbedPane, JFileChooser, JEditorPane, and |
| JRadioButtonMenuItem. Metalworks is optimized to work with the |
| Java look and feel (codenamed "Metal") and shows use of several |
| features, such as themes, that are specific to the Java look and |
| feel. |
| |
| |
| Running Metalworks |
| ================== |
| |
| To run the Metalworks demo: |
| |
| java -jar Metalworks.jar |
| |
| These instructions assume that this installation's version of the java |
| command is in your path. If it isn't, then you should either |
| specify the complete path to the java command or update your |
| PATH environment variable as described in the installation |
| instructions for the Java(TM) SE Development Kit. |
| |
| |
| Metalworks Features |
| =================== |
| The functionality of the Metalworks demo is minimal, and many |
| controls are non-functional. They are intended only to show how |
| to construct the UI for such interfaces. Things that do work in |
| the Metalworks demo include: |
| |
| 1. Choosing New from the File menu displays an e-mail |
| composition window. |
| |
| 2. Choosing Open from the File menu brings up the file chooser. |
| |
| 3. Choosing Preferences from the Edit menu will bring up a |
| dialog. Most of this dialog is only for show. |
| |
| 4. Choosing About Metalworks from the Help menu brings up a |
| JOptionPane with a brief description of the application. |
| |
| 5. Choosing Open Help Window from the Help menu brings up an |
| internal frame that displays a set of HTML files containing |
| all sorts of useful info. Look through these for tips about |
| using Metal. |
| |
| 6. The Theme menu allows you to change the color theme of the |
| application. The default theme (Steel) and several other |
| demo themes are included. Note that the themes can control |
| not only the colors, but also the sizes of many controls. |
| Also included with this demo is the PropertiesMetalTheme |
| class, which allows you to read a theme's colors from a text |
| file. The Charcoal theme is an example of using this. |
| |