SWT/JFace in Action: GUI Design with Eclipse 3.0

Matthew Scarpino, Stephen Holder, Stanford Ng, Laurent Mihalkovic9781932394276, 1-932394-27-3

Covering Eclipse’s new capability for building graphical user interfaces with version 3.0, the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) and JFace, this guide demonstrates how these award-winning tools have received broad support for creating desktop applications. Theory and practical examples reveal how to build GUIs that combine the look and feel of native interfaces with the platform independence of Java. This guide also shows how SWT makes use of the widgets provided by the operating system and describes how these components can be associated with events, containers, and graphics. With this knowledge, programmers can build fully featured user interfaces that communicate directly with the underlying platform. JFace’s ability to simplify and organize the process of GUI design is then demonstrated, enabling developers to modify and adapt components, and separate their information from their appearance.

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Table of contents :
TeamLiB……Page 1
Cover……Page 2
Contents……Page 8
Preface……Page 16
Acknowledgments……Page 17
Roadmap……Page 19
Conventions……Page 22
Author Online……Page 23
About the authors……Page 24
Overview of SWT and JFace……Page 28
1.1 What is SWT/JFace?……Page 29
1.2 Looking under the hood……Page 31
1.3 SWT/JFace: licensing and platform support……Page 36
1.4 The WidgetWindow……Page 38
1.5 Summary……Page 39
Getting started with SWT and JFace……Page 40
2.1 Programming in SWT……Page 41
2.2 Programming in SWT/JFace……Page 47
2.3 Beginning the WidgetWindow application……Page 51
2.4 Summary……Page 53
Widgets: part 1……Page 54
3.1 Introducing the Widget and Control classes……Page 55
3.2 Labels……Page 59
3.3 Involving the user with buttons……Page 61
3.4 Containing components with Composites……Page 65
3.5 Updating WidgetWindow……Page 72
3.6 Summary……Page 74
Working with events……Page 75
4.1 Event processing in SWT……Page 76
4.2 Event processing in JFace……Page 89
4.3 Updating the WidgetWindow……Page 101
4.4 Summary……Page 104
More widgets……Page 105
5.1 Editing text with SWT……Page 106
5.2 JFace text support……Page 115
5.3 The Combo widget……Page 127
5.4 ToolBarManager……Page 128
5.5 CoolBar……Page 130
5.6 Slider……Page 132
5.7 ProgressBar……Page 133
5.8 ProgressIndicator……Page 134
5.9 Summary……Page 135
Layouts……Page 136
6.1 The fill layout……Page 137
6.2 The row layout……Page 139
6.3 The grid layout……Page 143
6.4 The form layout……Page 146
6.5 Custom layouts……Page 151
6.6 Summary……Page 159
Graphics……Page 160
7.1 The graphic context……Page 161
7.2 Programming with colors……Page 167
7.3 Displaying text with fonts……Page 172
7.4 Incorporating images in graphics……Page 179
7.5 Updating the WidgetWindow……Page 191
7.6 Summary……Page 193
Working with trees and lists……Page 194
8.1 Viewers and the Viewer framework……Page 195
8.2 Trees……Page 203
8.3 Using the List widget……Page 207
8.4 Updating WidgetWindow……Page 209
8.5 Summary……Page 216
Tables and menus……Page 217
9.1 Tables……Page 218
9.2 Creating menus……Page 227
9.3 Updating WidgetWindow……Page 232
9.4 Summary……Page 238
Dialogs……Page 239
10.1 SWT dialogs……Page 240
10.2 JFace dialogs……Page 245
10.3 Updating WidgetWindow……Page 257
10.4 Summary……Page 260
Wizards……Page 261
Multipage dialogs……Page 262
11.1 Multipage dialogs……Page 263
11.2 The wizard……Page 266
11.3 Putting it all together……Page 268
11.4 Combining wizards……Page 270
11.5 Persistent wizard data……Page 271
11.6 Updating WidgetWindow……Page 273
11.7 Summary……Page 279
Advanced features……Page 280
12.1 Transferring data……Page 281
12.2 Preferences……Page 295
12.3 Label decorators……Page 303
12.4 The Browser widget……Page 307
12.5 Summary……Page 310
Looking beyond SWT/JFace: the Rich Client Platform……Page 311
13.1 Understanding RCP workbenches……Page 312
13.2 RCP: Looking under the hood……Page 315
13.3 Adding views and perspectives……Page 321
13.4 Populating forms with Eclipse Forms widgets……Page 326
13.5 Building a standalone RCP application……Page 333
13.6 Summary……Page 335
Creating projects with SWT/JFace……Page 338
A.1 Eclipse-based SWT/JFace development……Page 339
A.2 SWT/JFace in standalone applications……Page 349
OLE and ActiveX in SWT/JFace……Page 351
B.1 COM simplified……Page 352
B.2 The SWT COM library……Page 358
B.3 Doing COM with SWT……Page 368
Changeable GUIs with Draw2D……Page 389
C.1 Understanding Draw2D……Page 390
C.2 Draw2D Figures……Page 393
C.3 Using LayoutManagers and panes……Page 399
C.4 Using the Graphics class to create Shapes……Page 401
C.5 Understanding Connections……Page 407
C.6 Putting it all together……Page 410
The Graphical Editing Framework (GEF)……Page 415
D.1 A GEF overview……Page 416
D.2 Creating the FlowchartProject……Page 422
D.3 Creating the editor’s PaletteViewer……Page 427
D.4 The Model aspect: Model classes……Page 434
D.5 Changing Model properties with Commands……Page 445
D.6 The Controller aspect: EditPart classes……Page 453
D.7 Creating Commands with EditPolicy objects……Page 462
D.8 Adding Actions to the editor……Page 468
D.9 Editing with GEF: two examples……Page 473
D.10 Introducing the EditorPart……Page 477
D.11 Other GEF aspects……Page 485
index……Page 488