Chapter 2 - A whistle stop tour of the Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT)

In this chapter a selection of the simpler user interface components supplied by the Java AWT will be presented. Each will have its methods and other resources described and either a trivial init() method to illustrate its typical use and appearance, or a demonstration applet will be given. The full implementation of GUIs, as application, presentation and translation classes, will not be presented in the interests of manageable simplicity. During this tour many of the ideas from the previous chapter, in particular layout managers, will be re-presented, consolidated and augmented.

As well as providing an introduction to using existing Java components an introduction to extending them will also be presented. It is often the case that a particular requirement is not satisfied by any existing component and in these circumstances a specialized component has to be produced. In keeping with Java's Object Oriented philosophy this is best accomplished by the extension of an existing component rather than the construction of a component from scratch.

The chapter ends with a number of practical exercises concerned with the design and construction of applets. These exercises should be conscientiously attempted as the only sure way to assimilate the contents of the first two introductory chapters is to struggle with the software.

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2.1 The Abstract Windows Toolkit

Table of Contents.

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