The Customizer Framework

The Customizer Framework is a framework to customize Swing components with a GUI. Thus it can be used as a base for applications like layout editors. Currently you can move and resize components with the mouse, snap-to-grid feature is supported and many things more covered in this trail.

JCustomizer and JCustomizerPane
Text Customizers
Icon Customizers
Selection Manager
JCustomizerPropertyTable
Customizer Actions
CustomizerBar
Customize Appearance

JCustomizer and JCustomizerPane

JCustomizer wraps a JComponent and allows customization of the following properties:

x
y
width
height
foreground
background
font
opaque

To move and resize the JCustomizer with the mouse you have to add it to a JCustomizerPane.
Double-clicking on a JCustomizer will fire an ActionEvent. You can register an ActionListener to get notified about these events.

Here's a picture of an application that uses a single JCustomizer added to a JCustomizerPane:

A snapshot of the SimpleSingleCustomizerSample

Try this:

using Java Web Start.

Select the JCustomizer by clicking it. Then the handles appear. You can move and resize the component with the mouse. When you release the JCustomizer it snaps to the grid. If you resize the frame the grid adjusts to its size.

Below is the code from SimpleSingleCustomizerSample.java that creates and configures the JCustomizer and the JCustomizerPane.

                    // create a pane that supports customizers and "snap-to-grid" feature
        JCustomizerPane pane = new JCustomizerPane();
        // create a CustomizerLayout
        InfiniteTableLayout itl = new InfiniteTableLayout(50, 50, pane);
        // set the layout
        pane.setCustomizerLayout(itl);
        // create a JCustomizer that wraps a component and listens to mouse events
        JCustomizer simpleCustomizer = new JCustomizer(new JLabel("A Simple Component"));
        // add it to the JCustomizerPane
        pane.addCustomizer(simpleCustomizer, new AbsoluteTableConstraints(50, 50, 150, 50, simpleCustomizer, itl));

Text Customizers

AbstractTextCustomizer is a base class to write customizers for components, which can display texts, with inline-editing support. The framework provides 3 implementations:

JLabelCustomizer can customize the text of a JLabel.
JButtonCustomizer can customize the text of an AbstractButton.
JHtmlCustomizer can customize a multi-line HTML text using a JEditorPane. Note that the HTML support is very rudimental. If you need extended HTML support and have a better editor at hand you can register it either as an inline editor using the setEditor-method (if the editor is a JTextComponent) or configure it as the property editor in the JCustomizerPropertyTable. Otherwise this customizer can still be used to edit a simple multi-line text with automatic and forced line wrapping support.

Try this:

using Java Web Start.

Double-click a text editor to edit its text and resize the JHtmlCustomizer to see how the text wraps automatically!

Below is the code from TextCustomizersSample.java that creates and configures the text customizers.

                    // create a CustomizerLayout
        InfiniteTableLayout itl = new InfiniteTableLayout(customizerPane);
        // set the layout
        customizerPane.setCustomizerLayout(itl);
        // create a JLabelCustomizer, which supports inline editing of a text
        JLabelCustomizer labelCustomizer = new JLabelCustomizer("A Label Customizer - double click to edit!");
        // add it to the JCustomizerPane
        customizerPane.addCustomizer(labelCustomizer, new AbsoluteTableConstraints(50, 50,  270, 20, labelCustomizer, itl));
        // create a JButtonCustomizer to customize a button using the String constructor.
        JButtonCustomizer buttonCustomizer = new JButtonCustomizer("Double click to edit this button!");
        // add it to the JCustomizerPane
        customizerPane.addCustomizer(buttonCustomizer, new AbsoluteTableConstraints(300, 100,  210, 50, buttonCustomizer, itl));
        // create a JButtonCustomizer to customize a JCheckBox
        JButtonCustomizer checkBoxCustomizer = new JButtonCustomizer(new JCheckBox("Double click to edit this check box!", true));
        // set the background color to white
        checkBoxCustomizer.setBackground(Color.WHITE);
        // add it to the JCustomizerPane
        customizerPane.addCustomizer(checkBoxCustomizer, new AbsoluteTableConstraints(30, 160,  250, 20, checkBoxCustomizer, itl));
        // create a JButtonCustomizer to customize a JRadioButton
        JButtonCustomizer radioButtonCustomizer = new JButtonCustomizer(new JRadioButton("Double click to edit this radio button!", true));
       // set the background color to white
        radioButtonCustomizer.setBackground(Color.WHITE);
        // add it to the JCustomizerPane
        customizerPane.addCustomizer(radioButtonCustomizer, new AbsoluteTableConstraints(300, 200,  270, 20, radioButtonCustomizer, itl));
        // create a JHtmlCustomizer, which supports inline editing of a text
        JHtmlCustomizer htmlCustomizer = new JHtmlCustomizer();
        // set some HTML text
        htmlCustomizer.setHtmlBody("<b>This is an <i>editable</i> HTML</b> text! Double click!<br> " +
                "<a href=\"http://www.softsmithy.org\">This is a link!</a><br>" +
                "<font color=\"#FF0000\">And this </font>" +
                "<font color=\"#00FF00\">is a </font>" +
                "<font color=\"#00FFFF\">colored text!</font><br><br>" +
                "This is a very long text that shows automatic line wrapping!");
        // add it to the JCustomizerPane
        customizerPane.addCustomizer(htmlCustomizer, new AbsoluteTableConstraints(150, 250,  270, 150, htmlCustomizer, itl));

Implementing your own text customizer can be quite easy. Have a look at the source code of JLabelCustomizer for an example. (The source code gets shipped with the library or can be retrieved from the Subversion repository of the SoftSmithy project).