jdk
About Metalworks
Metalworks is a simple Swing-based simulated e-mail application. It shows off several features of Swing, including JInternalFrame, JTabbedPane, JFileChooser, JEditorPane, and JRadioButtonMenuItem. Metalworks is optimized to work with the Java look and feel (codenamed "Metal") and shows use of several features, such as themes, that are specific to the Java look and feel.
Running Metalworks
To run the Metalworks demo:
java -jar Metalworks.jar
These instructions assume that this installation's version of the java command is in your path. If it isn't, then you should either specify the complete path to the java command or update your PATH environment variable as described in the installation instructions for the Java(TM) SE Development Kit.
Metalworks Features
The functionality of the Metalworks demo is minimal, and many controls are non-functional. They are intended only to show how to construct the UI for such interfaces. Things that do work in the Metalworks demo include:
-
Choosing New from the File menu displays an e-mail composition window.
-
Choosing Open from the File menu brings up the file chooser.
-
Choosing Preferences from the Edit menu will bring up a dialog. Most of this dialog is only for show.
-
Choosing About Metalworks from the Help menu brings up a JOptionPane with a brief description of the application.
-
Choosing Open Help Window from the Help menu brings up an internal frame that displays a set of HTML files containing all sorts of useful info. Look through these for tips about using Metal.
-
The Theme menu allows you to change the color theme of the application. The default theme (Steel) and several other demo themes are included. Note that the themes can control not only the colors, but also the sizes of many controls. Also included with this demo is the PropertiesMetalTheme class, which allows you to read a theme's colors from a text file. The Charcoal theme is an example of using this.