Creating a Container

Begin by opening the New wizard from the menu bar in the main window. The top-level container that you create holds the other components (button and label) in your application. You create the container using the JFrame component and place the container in the colorswitch package. (A package is a group of related Java classes and interfaces.)

To create the container:

  1. In the Filesystems pane of the Explorer window, select the sampledir node.
  2. From the main window, choose File and chooose New.

    The New wizard is displayed.

  3. Type ColorSwitch in the Name text field.
  4. Click in the Package field and type colorswitch.
  5. Click Finish in the wizard.

    A colorswitch package is added under the sampledir directory in the Filesystems pane of the Explorer window. A ColorSwitch object also appears under the colorswitch node. Expand the ColorSwitch node to see the nodes for the ColorSwitch class object and the top-level GUI container, ColorSwitch JFrame.

    In addition, the workspace automatically changes to GUI editing, and the Form Editor and Source Editor are displayed.

    The Form Editor contains three panes: the Form Designer, the Component Inspector, and the Component Palette. The Form Designer is the layout area in which you create the ColorSwitch GUI. The Component Inspector provides a visual representation of the components in your application and enables you to edit their properties. The Component Palette is located above the Form Designer pane. The Component Palette contains numerous tabs for various AWT, Swing, and JavaBeans components, along with a selection of layout managers and border styles.

    The Source Editor shows the Java source code for the JFrame component. You can type only in the white areas of the Source Editor.

Next:  Selecting a Layout Manager
Back:  Creating the ColorSwitch Application

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