Java Magazine - May/June 2012

//java architect /

LISTING 6

Figure 2

Figure 3

It doesn’t represent a large part of your app, so it won’t show up in the taskbar and it doesn’t have decorations. On Mac OS X, it won’t show up in the Expose view either. A JWindow is used for transient things, such as drop-down menus and combo boxes. Because our keyboard overlay is not a large, functional part of the app, using a JWindow is perfect.

Figure 2 shows what the final app looks like. As I type into any text field or press menu shortcut keys, the most recent keystroke appears in the overlay window.

Fancy Pop-Down Menus In the old days of windowing interfaces, we had a fairly small number of UI controls: buttons, sliders, checkboxes, scroll bars, and menus. That was pretty much it. Today we have many, many kinds of custom controls that behave in lots of different ways.

private static class Popup TabComponent extends JComponent { } @Override protected void paintComponent(Graphics gfx) { Graphics2D g = (Graphics2D) gfx; g.setRenderingHint( RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING, RenderingHints.

VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON);

COMMUNITY JAVA IN ACTION

Color[] colors = new Color[]{ new Color(0.6f,.6f,.6f,0.9f) ,new Color(0.9f,0.9f,0.9f,1f) ,new Color(0.9f,0.9f,0.9f,1f) ,new Color(0.6f,0.6f,0.6f,0.9f)}; float[] stops = new float[]{0.2f,0.4f,0.9f,1f}; LinearGradientPaint paint = new LinearGradientPaint( new Point(0,0), new Point(0,getHeight()), stops,colors);

// g.setPaint(new Color(255,255,255,120)); g.setPaint(paint);

Path2D.Double path = new Path2D.Double(); path.move To(get Width()/2, 0); path.line To(get Width()/2+ 20, 30); path.line To(get Width()/2-20, 30); path.closePath();