Notes from the “Using NetBeans for Rich Desktop Clients” session. *Very* little content in this session, most disappointing.

Writing Rich Desktop Apps With NetBeans The Need for Rich Desktop Clients iTunes good example of why rich desktop apps are useful. – Web will not do it all – real time interaction. (share trading and monitoring) – Integration with OS (sound etc) 100% Java technology counts – Easy of administration and distribution (WebStart) – Runs everywhere. If you decide to deploy using webstart then the user can just use the browser to get the application and run it. So depooyment is easy as well. Demo – What NetBeans Looks Like and How It Differs From ???? IDE – – Can rearrange layout of views. – Resize views etc. Platform – similar but nearly empty. Can still arrange views but fewer available. Building on NetBeans can save a lot of effort by not having to handle localization, branding, modularization etc. Concentrate on teh business logic only. NetBeans acts as a container. Similar to J2EE container to deploy beans without caring about load distribution. NetBeans in modular. Can plug various components and they interact with each other. If user needs to use more than one app with regular app types, the user has to adjust to different UIs and switch between apps etc. If you use a platform as the container, each module can be suited for a special task but the UI integration is still very tight. Modifying an app to be a Netbeans IDE module Module is any JAR file with enhanced manifest Manifest-Version: 1.0 OpenIDE-Module: org.netbeans.modules.text/1 OpenIDE-Module-Specification-Version: 1.13 Platform provides ability to handle dependencies and modify runtime classpath and enable/disable modules depending on user needs. OpenIDE-Module-Module-Dependencies: org.netbeans.api.spellchecker/1 > 1.3, org.netbeans.core > 4.32 OpenIDE-Module-Provides: EditorImpl OpenIDE-Module-Requires: SpellImpl NetBeans tries to satisfy dependencies automatically and adds them to classpath. Cooperation of Modules Composition of UI Elements Menu, toolbar elements – Get merged together by the NetBeans framework Windows layout Registration solved by Layers. when constructing items, NetBeans creates composition of all such elements nad combines them. NetBeans provides generic views for various types. Presentation of tree hierarchies – not only tree view, but many others, list view, icon view etc. Customizatioon and branding can be done by selecting different modules rather than changing netbeans SDK itself.