The Component Palette is a toolbar on the left side of the Form Editor window, above the Form Designer pane. The palette holds commonly used and customized visual components that you can add to forms.
You can add a component to a form by clicking the component in the palette and then clicking in the Form Designer pane in the area where you want to place the component. You can also add your own components to the Component Palette for easy use in other forms, as described in Adding a Bean to the Component Palette.
If you prefer a smaller component palette or if you have too many components to manage with tabs and icons, you can choose not to display the components. Right click in the Component Palette to the left of the components and choose Small Palette from the contextual menu. The Add Mode button appears to the right of the Connection mode button.
When displaying the Small Palette, you can still select components to add to a form. Click the Add Mode button and select a component from the menu.
Buttons in the Component Palette show three different modes that the Form Editor window can be in. By default, only the Selection and the Connection mode buttons appear. The Add mode button appears only when the Small Palette is chosen.
The following table describes each mode and includes an image with the mode's icon selected.
Mode | Description | Icon Selected |
---|---|---|
Selection mode | You can select a component in the Form Editor window (default mode). | ![]() |
Connection mode | You can link two components together with an event. | ![]() |
Add mode | You can place the component selected from the component menu into a form in the Form Designer pane. A component that has been selected but not yet added to a form is shown to the left of the mode icons (a JTextPane component has been selected in the example shown here). | ![]() |
See also | |
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Adding a New Component
Using the Connection Wizard Form Editor Customizing the Component Palette |