The SynthConstants API says, "Constants used by Synth. Not all Components support all states." I have a question: What states in SynthConstants are respectively supported by each different Component? I think this is important for do a custom look and feel using Synth.
SELECTED and PRESSED can be used with buttons, such as JButtons or other sub classes of AbstractButton, and not passive components like JLabel. The others are valid for pretty much all components.
Related
I have a Swing custom control which serves an almost identical function to a JLabel. It's not accessible by default for people who use assistive technology, like a screen reader. I'm working on the Megamek GitHub Project, and trying to figure out how to associate the PMSimpleLabel class with other objects, as in the JLabel class's setLabelFor method.
The approach taken so far seems to be to more or less ape the JLabel's accessibility implementation. I'm not sure if this is the right way to go about it, there seem to be some elements in the latter I'm not understanding.
The problem turns out to be largely because of the custom components. The AccessibleJComponent class has a fallback mechanism to name controls which don't ohterwise have accessible names, but this is hard-coded to look for a JLabel and not a custom label class.
There are a few work-arounds for this, such as modifying the get/setAccessibleName methods, or switching to using the accessible description instead.
The solution in the long term is probably to use regular Swing components where possible
Does anyone know any good resources where I can find and use custom Swing components with more advanced functionality than the default swing. More specifically I am looking for
DatePickers
JTable with sorting and multicolumn filtering
Also if you know any good custom look and feels you can share that would be great. I have found several but if you know something that is good please advise.
swingx
Contains extensions to the Swing GUI toolkit, including new and enhanced components that provide functionality commonly required by rich client applications. Highlights include:
Sorting, filtering, highlighting for tables, trees, and lists
Find/search Auto-completion Login/authentication framework TreeTable
component Collapsible panel component Date picker component
Tip-of-the-Day component
See more here
http://swingx.java.net/
For the 1st part - SwingX is the best solution.
For look and feels see here
You can find advanced components and concept for custom design here with explaination
-JXDatePicker
-JXPanel
-JXGlassPanel
-JXTitledPanel
-JXHyperLink
-JXRadioGroupy
-JXRadioGroup
http://www.tutego.de/java/additional-java-swing-components.htm
Tooltips in my application can be quite long, therefore I'd like them to have line breaks.
I don't want to use html as I'd prefer to set a (max) width of my tooltips instead and have the line breaks dynamically.
In the accepted answer the this similar question Multi-line tooltips in Java? I read about JMultiLineToolTip. Unfortunately the provided link doesn't work anymore and there are many different JMultiLineToolTip out there. Therefore my two questions:
Which JMultiLineToolTip is a good one to use?
How can I use such a class to represent all of the tooltips in my application?
EDIT: as everyone seems to recommend the use of html, is there a way to define the width of my tooltip in pixels (or some other unit than number of characters) using html?
If you are not afraid of extending swing tool tip, you can create your own JMultiLineToolTip:
Extend JTooltip In the extended Tool tip component implementation,
set a custom tool tip UI In customUI implementation
Implementpaint() method to write given string in multi line
Here is an example - it shows how to use it as well
However, to answer your questions:
Which JMultiLineToolTip is a good one to use?
Use <html>
How can I use such a class to represent all of the tooltips in my application?
Per compopnent, it is easy but tedious to achieve as you will have to override creatreToolTip() API. But if you want to change it globally, you may:
(i)Simple way - Register your custom tooltip UI with the UIManager at the beginning of your execution.
UIManager.put( "ToolTipUI", "SeNormToolTipUI" );
UIManager.put( "SeNormToolTipUI",Class.forName( multiLineToolTipUIClassName ) );
(ii) complex way
You will have to start implementing your own look and feel. In the look and feel implementation, you would provide defaults for ToolTipUI as your UI implementation and then set that look and feel to the application you are running. For instance take a look at the MetalLookAndFeel implementation. You may just extend that part and implement your on lnf.
So, it is better to use <html>
1) Html is easiest of ways for plain JToolTip
2) use JWindow(un_decorated JDialog) with JTextArea, better would be JTextPane (supporting stylled text),
the disadvantage is you have to manually set window to the Point, you have to manually set for setInitialDelay and setDismissDelay (Swing Timer), setVisible(true/false)
the advantage is that you using full manageable top level container with definitions for own parent
3) I use JLabel with Html formatted and stylled text added to the GlassPane, notice easiest alternative is use non_opaque JLayeredPane (Java6) or JLayer (Java7)
I have tons of jbuttons, jtextfields, jlabels, jmenus, gui items and it is extremely time consuming to set the background color and foreground color one at a time.
I want to be able to color the fonts(foreground) and backgrounds all the jmenus, jmenuitems,jtextfields,jbuttons, etc quickly/concisely in my project instead of having to set them one at a time.
Is there any technique to do this more concisely instead of doing it one at a time?
1) most eficient way would be to use Custom Look and Feel, part of them have got a nice Themes
2) set value to the UIDefault, Listing UIDefault Properties
EDIT:
best of all UIManager Defaults by #camickr
You can combine Swing with CSS or use a Swing Look & Feel in order to create a standard look for your components. The Java site says:
Before we get into a CSS implementation, let's consider the alternative: a custom look and feel. Swing Look and Feels (L&Fs) are sets of classes that implement the actual drawing of components at a very low level (think lines and bitmaps). They can be swapped out for new ones at runtime, often to implement the look of a native platform; i.e., the JDK for OSX has a set of classes that make Swing apps look like native Aqua apps, with candy buttons and blue tint. Custom L&Fs are powerful, but not trivial or quick to build. You will usually have to touch 20 or so classes and implement a whole bunch of special drawing code.
So CSS is easier to use. The same article goes on to give a tutorial about how to implement the CSS with Swing. They provide a nice walkthrough of creating the right rules and then going on to implement them in CSS. However, this is not simply "copy and paste" code.
If you'd just like to use a package (without having to code it yourself) the answers to the question Can I use CSS for Java Swing? suggest Flying Saucer and Jaxx.
They're all JComponents so you can make an ArrayList of everything:
//Adding everything to the ArrayList
ArrayList<JComponent> myComponents = new ArrayList<JComponents>();
JButton b1 = new JButton("Button 1");
myComponents.add(b1);
JMenuItem item = new JMenuItem("Menu Item 1");
myComponents.add(item);
//Coloring the foreground/background
for(JComponent j : myComponents) {
j.setForeground(new Color("BLUE"));
j.setBackground(new Color("RED"));
}
If you use a Look and Feel that honors the UI constants in javax.swing.UIManager then you can just set them. There are values for e.g. panel background. If not or if you can't control the look enough by this you can write you own UI delegate that draws a specific component (e.g. javax.swing.plaf.ButtonUI for JButtons). If even this is not enough you can write your own Look And Feel. If you just extend the Metal LnF it is not that hard, you would write own UI delegates and set properties, like above, but centralized.
In the Java Swing app I made it seems to me that all the component are too tightly packed.
In QT one can specify padding and margins for the layout.
Is there something similar for swing?
alt text http://img12.yfrog.com/img12/9612/screenshotscreenerconfi.png
Here is a screen shot of my application that I thing is too tight (is it? what do you think?.
Thanks.
Take a look to the GridBagLayoutManager. Its the most compex layout manager but everything can be acomplished whith it.
It uses the GridBagConstraintObject which has the inset property, it specifies the separation to the top, bottom, left and right components.
example: GridBagConstraintObject.insets.left=20
You could use MiGLayout as your layout manager. It allows all kinds of customizations, including margins/paddings.
You could achieve a much better layout for the example above by using DesignGridLayout in just a couple of lines of code (one per row in your layout). DesignGridLayout will automatically use the correct spacing for the runtime platform.
besides I would highly suggest that you DON'T use TitledBorders in your form because it prevents ANY LayoutManager (as advanced as it may be) from automatically aligning correctly the various components across different groups. Instead you could use a JLabel with a JSeparator (there are examples in DesignGridLayout, but this works with any other LayoutManager).
Since Java 1.6 swing there is a new GroupLayout manager that make this kind of works easier.
For instance there is a method: setAutoCreateGaps() that:
...you add two components to a SequentialGroup a gap between the two components is automatically be created...
For instance:
What LayoutManager are you using? Adding margins is quite easy, it depends however on the specific LayoutManager used.
FormLayout is another good layout manager. With a good GUI editor like JFormDesigner it makes GUI building easy enough. JFormDesigner actually automatically adds sufficient padding in most cases. I have to recommend against using GridBagLayout. It does the job alright, but is very complex which makes it difficult to use and maintain.