Steve Northover

The first part of this article (JDJ, Vol. 8, issue 4) introduced the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT), and showed how graphical user interfaces can be created using some of the basic widgets found in SWT. In addition, layout classes were described that allow widgets to be arbitrarily positioned and sized within their parent. In Part 2, we continue where the previous article left off, describing some of the more advanced controls and concepts, including multithreading in the user interface. We conclude with a brief discussion of SWT graphics. Items Many of the advanced controls in SWT make use of items. Items are widgets that represent a specific kind of child within a control. They are always used in conjunction with the parent and cannot exist without the parent. For example, a menu contains menu items and a menu item cannot exist outside of a menu. Table 1 shows some... (more)

SWT - A Native Widget Toolkit for Java Part 1 of 2

The Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) is a Java class library that allows you to create native user interfaces. It's designed to provide efficient, portable access to the underlying facilities of the operating system on which it's implemented. SWT uses native widgets wherever possible, giving an SWT program a native look and feel and a high level of integration with the desktop. In addition, SWT includes a rich set of controls such as tree, table, and tab folder. This article introduces SWT by describing some of the basic concepts and classes. Hello World: A Simple SWT Program The e... (more)