| J. Duke | 319a3b9 | 2007-12-01 00:00:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame^] | 1 | About Metalworks |
| 2 | ================ |
| 3 | Metalworks is a simple Swing-based simulated e-mail |
| 4 | application. It shows off several features of Swing, including |
| 5 | JInternalFrame, JTabbedPane, JFileChooser, JEditorPane, and |
| 6 | JRadioButtonMenuItem. Metalworks is optimized to work with the |
| 7 | Java look and feel (codenamed "Metal") and shows use of several |
| 8 | features, such as themes, that are specific to the Java look and |
| 9 | feel. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | |
| 12 | Running Metalworks |
| 13 | ================== |
| 14 | |
| 15 | To run the Metalworks demo: |
| 16 | |
| 17 | java -jar Metalworks.jar |
| 18 | |
| 19 | These instructions assume that this installation's version of the java |
| 20 | command is in your path. If it isn't, then you should either |
| 21 | specify the complete path to the java command or update your |
| 22 | PATH environment variable as described in the installation |
| 23 | instructions for the Java(TM) SE Development Kit. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | |
| 26 | Metalworks Features |
| 27 | =================== |
| 28 | The functionality of the Metalworks demo is minimal, and many |
| 29 | controls are non-functional. They are intended only to show how |
| 30 | to construct the UI for such interfaces. Things that do work in |
| 31 | the Metalworks demo include: |
| 32 | |
| 33 | 1. Choosing New from the File menu displays an e-mail |
| 34 | composition window. |
| 35 | |
| 36 | 2. Choosing Open from the File menu brings up the file chooser. |
| 37 | |
| 38 | 3. Choosing Preferences from the Edit menu will bring up a |
| 39 | dialog. Most of this dialog is only for show. |
| 40 | |
| 41 | 4. Choosing About Metalworks from the Help menu brings up a |
| 42 | JOptionPane with a brief description of the application. |
| 43 | |
| 44 | 5. Choosing Open Help Window from the Help menu brings up an |
| 45 | internal frame that displays a set of HTML files containing |
| 46 | all sorts of useful info. Look through these for tips about |
| 47 | using Metal. |
| 48 | |
| 49 | 6. The Theme menu allows you to change the color theme of the |
| 50 | application. The default theme (Steel) and several other |
| 51 | demo themes are included. Note that the themes can control |
| 52 | not only the colors, but also the sizes of many controls. |
| 53 | Also included with this demo is the PropertiesMetalTheme |
| 54 | class, which allows you to read a theme's colors from a text |
| 55 | file. The Charcoal theme is an example of using this. |
| 56 | |