Recent Posts by Geertjan Wielenga

My first experiments with the Task List API (which is new in NetBeans 6.0) have resulted in a plugin that finds the values of all the HREF attributes in an HTML document and then puts them into the Task List: The principles of working with this API are straightforward. Begin by registering the task list in the layer file. Task lists are organized in groups, here I create a new one for mine: <folder name="TaskList"> <folder name="Groups"> <file name="demo.instance"> ...

If you look in contrib/tasklist, you will find the sources of a module called Checkstyle, which integrates Checkstyle into the IDE. As stated on the Checkstyle site, it is "a development tool to help programmers write Java code that adheres to a coding standard. It automates the process of checking Java code to spare humans of this boring (but important) task." It is also interesting as an example of the new NetBeans IDE Task List API. Soon, I will be investigating how to...

I've been trying to see how much can be done with the PropertyEditorSupport.paintValue, partly because the development team we met in Budapest want to display an image in a properties sheet. It doesn't seem to be possible, the drawImage doesn't seem to work, from what I can tell. However, some other humble effects are possible, such as rectangles with rounded corners: @Overridepublic void paintValue(java.awt.Graphics g, java.awt.Rectangle box) { Rectangle r =...

I found a great tip in the NetBeans Developer FAQ today. In DevFaqPropertySheetNodes, it turns out that if your TopComponent implements a PropertyChangeListener (together with the ExplorerManager.Provider which it is already implementing), then you can add a PropertyChangeListener to the explorer manager. When you do that, you can listen for the currently selected node in the view and then set the activated node on the TopComponent, as shown here: public void...

A relatively frequent question when creating a helpset for an application on the NetBeans Platform is: "I am not creating an IDE. However, in the helpset's titlebar, I see the text 'IDE Help'. Aaaargh!" Okay, that's not really a question. However, that's normally the way in which this question is "asked". And then the answer is: "You need to brand the titlebar, as follows." And then a tricky little procedure is provided, involving an obscure XML file in an unlikely place in...

At the end of yesterday's blog entry, hilz asked about multiple nodes in a TreeTableView. Well, here's the start of something along those lines: It is the old NetBeans Nodes, Explorer Manager, and Component Palette Tutorial tutorial, but this time with a TreeTableView, and Marilyn isn't on the NetBeans Platform anymore. I just put the NetBeans API JARs into my J2SE application. Here's the source structure: I put the sample in the Plugin Portal. When you install it, you'll get...

There's an interesting question at the end of yesterday's blog entry, by Kees Kuip, from the JMeld project, about text color and row color in org.openide.explorer.view.TreeTableView. How to set them? Well, you can create your own PropertyEditorSupport, as indicated below. The highlighted method is all I added to yesterday's code: private class FullPathProperty extends PropertySupport.ReadOnly<String> { File file; public FullPathProperty(File file) { ...

One thing (in fact, the first thing) the developers we visited in Budapest asked us for was "a tutorial on TreeTableView". Not surprising, is it. Using the approach described yesterday, (i.e., create a J2SE application instead of a NetBeans module), I adapted Jarda's file browser, so that you can see the full path as well as whether the folder is hidden or not, in a sortable TreeTableView: I've found thus far that it is much easier to learn explorer views via J2SE projects...

Jarda and I are in Budapest visiting a team of developers. Somewhere along the line, I think in the taxi on the way from the hotel to the site, he knocked together an application that uses the NetBeans APIs, without using the NetBeans Platform. In other words, there's no module here. Just a plain Java application. The end result is a file browser that looks as follows: And this is the source structure of the application. Of course, take special note of the NetBeans API JAR...