Second Prototype

Overview:

Our prototype is capable of creating a list containing all the components currently on the screen. As of now, these components are only a button, frame, and textarea. As properties are manipulated the appropriate list is iterated through "updating" all the components in the list. The components then aquire the desired "Look and Feel" set by the user. In this prototype the user is able to change the ButtonBackgroundColor, PanelBackgroundColor, and the TextBackgroundColor. Once the "Ok" button is hit the list are iterated through and the screen is updated to new "Look and Feel" settings.

Something interesting to try, is to bring up multiply instances of the "Look and Feel" control panel. All of the instances are capable of changing the properties. What is interesting about them is all of the buttons and frame which are on the screen. If the properties are changed then all of these "Look and Feel" control panels are updated as a result.

The Internationalization button does not bring up any window yet. This was put in basically to give an idea as what the future will hold for the next prototype.

This program does not in any way reflect the layout of how the final "Control Panel" will look and function. This has basically been a demonstration program used to seeing the concept of updating component properties.

Future:

As of now our Contorl Panel does not make the use of dynamically adding components. Even though, it is not implemented in this prototype we felt that this was a good start and plan to implement this is the future.

Also we have plans of being able to save the properties data, as set by the user, to a file. This file will hold the current settings desired by the user so the "Look and Feel" of the program is never lost.

Of course, we also have the other requirements such as internationalization, fonts, and other things. These will also be implemented in the future.

Problems:

We have encountered java platform problems. It seems that the same java program run on various platforms (Solaris, Win95, Mac) is inconsistent. We have not currently investigated the reasons of why these other platforms function differently. As of now we feel that this prototype is best viewed on a Solaris platform.

Other problems we have encountered are the use of colors in JDK. In the above program, if you choose the following color patterns:

ButtonBackgroundColor = Cyan, FrameBackgroundColor = White, TextAreaBackgroundColor = Orange

the TextArea is not displayed in Orange but Yellow. Very strange, and we have not been able to figure out why yet.

Source Code:

Sample.java

LookAndFeel.java

Properties.java

ComponentList.java

LinkedList.java

M_Button.java

M_Frame.java

M_TextArea.java

NOTE: the last day this page was updated ... December 9th, 1996