If your worst nightmare is drowning in a bowl of alphabet soup, maybe you’d better re-think your Java-oriented strategies, because you are about to leap onto a scaffold of functions that come wrapped up, ribbon and all, to help you give your programs that graphical look!
From a fairly prudent perspective, The Abstract Windows Toolkit (as it is called), with its horde of teeny-weeny functions, does indeed provide the underpinnings for the user-friendly Graphic interface. In this section, we will tinker with these little widgets that come bundled up as the AWT. Before embarking on any sort of coding, let us look at the following diagram…
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In the init(), we add a button called “hell”. When you run this program, you will see a button with the name (or the label) “hell” on the screen. That’s not great shakes afterall, but you just wrote your first AWT program!
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Just as running the earlier program presented you with a button, the second one will give you a text field. It’s nothing but a single line edit box on the screen. Well, I don’t mind going on like that for each and every wee feature, showing you one new thing at a time, but its the space that counts (not to mention your patience). Hence, I guess it should suffice to say that like the above objects, i.e, Button and Textfield, the following can also be created.
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This is similar to a huge text field, that is, it covers a larger area than the Textfield. While trying the text area, I’d rather you maximise the applet window because it comes like a multiple line edit box on the screen.
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Choice is a word straight out from the Jargon Dump (which, incidentally, is the favourite hang-out of the techno-nerds!). A Choice() adds a drop down list box.
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This will display a dry list box displayed on the screen. Dry because there will be no options given. (Well you wouldn’t want to use their options anyway).
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Unless you bought your computer to serve as the world’s most expensive doorstop, you are well-versed with the check-boxes. In Java, this is the way you create your own checkboxes.
CheckboxGroup
The Windows aficionados know it as the radio-buttons.
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Remember how you scroll through your love letters? Well, ulterior motives aside, you are well-versed with the scrollbars (unless ofcourse, your fiancee is a DOS-diehard).
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Here, let us meet the most drab member of the AWT family. Just plain text that drawls on the screen whatever you pass it as a parameter.
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