Creating a Swing Dashboard Widget

Java 6 u10 will allow transparent windows and undockable applets. This should allow the creation of some Dashboard widget like Swing apps.

I'll see how close I can get to creating a basic widget in Swing. I'll take it one step at the time and post all the code and a demo at the end.

The exercise is purely a UI one. The code marvelousness and resource usage won't be a top concern here.

Step 1 - Test app with basic widget

In this case a blue square that does nothing. In the next few steps I'll try and get it more widget like.

<br />public class Frame1<br /> extends JFrame<br />{<br /> public Frame1()<br /> {<br /> setLayout(new FlowLayout());<br /> ((JComponent)this.getContentPane()).setBorder(<br /> BorderFactory.createEmptyBorder(20,20,20,20));<br /> setSize( new Dimension(220, 240));<br /> setTitle("Widget");<br /> add(createComp()); <br /> <br /> setLocationRelativeTo(null);<br /> setDefaultCloseOperation( JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE );<br /> setVisible(true);<br /> }<br /><br /><br /> private JComponent createComp()<br /> {<br /> JPanel panel = new JPanel();<br /> panel.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(160,160));<br /> panel.setOpaque(true);<br /> panel.setBackground(new Color(20,50,110));<br /><br /> return panel;<br /> } <br /> <br /> public static void main(String[] args)<br /> {<br /> new Frame1();<br /> }<br />}<br />

Looks like this: