Recent Posts by Geertjan Wielenga

My understanding is that "instanceof" should be avoided, in favor of using the NetBeans Lookup. However, what about this situation—we have a node for libraries, with different subnodes, depending on the instance of the object in question, which is either Book or Borrower: Here's the code I used for the above scenario: public class LibraryNode extends AbstractNode { public LibraryNode(Library library) { super(Children.create(new SubChildFactory(library), true)); ...

I've completed the draft of a small scenario that will form the basis of a new NetBeans Platform tutorial. The tutorial will have, as one of its first steps, the instruction to start up Eclipse! You will then use Eclipse to model a small scenario, creating a Supplier object with multiple Product objects: Then, you will be told how to import the EMF-related OSGi bundles into a new NetBeans Platform application. As a next step, you will create a new module and copy the classes...

In part 1, you can read how Skype and WebEx were used in Prague to provide a NetBeans Platform Certified Training to students in Burkina Faso. The second part of the training will be a workshop. In the workshop, the students will port one of their existing applications to the NetBeans Platform. To prepare for the workshop, I've been studying the application the students provided, i.e., a CMS in Java and Swing, with this source structure: When you run the above application,...

Trying to find a Swing approach to expressing the Eclipse Nebula PShelf Widget, used in the left-most window below: I found commercial versions of the above component, i.e., in its Swing version, and then found this written in 2005, but still completely valid: JOutlookBar: Building an Outlook-Style Menu Component Using the above, here's the result: Nice thing is that each of the additions to the outlook panel could come from the layer, making the component pluggable, in...

Trying to get SaveAsCapable to work for a Node, with Edvin Syse being very helpful on the dev mailing list. Also helpful was taking a look at the sources (and Javadoc) of the context-sensitive Action that is enabled when SaveAsCapable is present in the Lookup: Hence, unless the Node is displayed in a TopComponent in "editor" mode, the SaveAsAction will never be enabled. That's a bit unfortunate. The assumption seems to have been that the SaveAsAction can only be relevant to...

Where to attend a presentation on the NetBeans Platform? Well, in the coming months, here are the places to be: London. http://java.dzone.com/free-netbeans-rcp-talk-london Johannesburg & Cape Town. http://netbeanstraining.co.za San Francisco. http://marakana.com/training/java/netbeans_platform.html What will you learn? How to make large pluggable desktop applications like these. Is your location not mentioned above? Fine. Invite us. Leave a comment at the end of this blog entry or...

The reason I began investigating integrating the NetBeans HTML Editor into a multiview component is that Edvin Syse from Syse Data in Norway is porting this CMS to the NetBeans Platform: So, each multiview component represents one article in the CMS. And each article in the CMS is represented by a domain object, with various fields for the article name, date, etc... as well as a field for HTML content. Hence the HTML content shown in the HTML tab of the multiview component...

Here's a list of the chapters in the upcoming translation of Jurgen Petri's NetBeans RCP book, which will be released by Packt as "NetBeans Platform 6.9 Developer's Guide": Introduction. Introduces the book, providing a general overview of what is to come. Modules. Presents the application that you will create throughout the book, after introducing the concept of modularity, why modularity makes sense, and what its main features are. Forms. Starts the creation of the...

In a brief departure from the darker corners of the NetBeans APIs, and to mark the upcoming World Cup Final between Holland and Spain, let me present you with some lesser known details pertaining to the historical and cultural overlaps between these two countries. And, of course, since I'm Dutch, the focus of this odd list of factoids is inevitably from the Dutch side of the coin. Eighty Years' War. The Dutch War of Independence was fought from 1568 to 1648. It began as a...