The Form Editor is a visual tool for creating and editing GUI code. A form is usually the container for all the items that make up a GUI. You can also have a form that is completely nonvisual, or you can have a form that serves as nonvisual storage for customized visual components.
To create a form, choose File New
from the main menu. Then expand the GUI Forms node and select a form template
from the Choose Template pane. See Creating a
New Form for more information.
When a new form is created, it is indicated by a
node
in the Explorer. To open an existing form, you can do one of the following
operations from the Explorer:
To edit the Java source of a form without having to load the form itself, right-click the form node from the Explorer and choose Edit from the contextual menu.
When a form is opened, the IDE switches to the GUI editing workspace and displays the Source Editor and Form Editor windows.
The Source Editor window displays the Java source for the current form.
The Form Editor window contains the Form Designer, the Component Inspector, and the Component Palette:
Actions performed in the Form Editor window, with the exception of Save, can be undone or reversed by doing one of the following:
To redo or reverse an Undo command performed in the Form Editor window, do one of the following:
To reload the form you are currently working on, do one of the following:
This feature is useful for testing changes you make to Java bean components that you develop. You need to recompile your modified Java bean components first before you can view your changes using Ctrl-R.
See also | |
---|---|
Form Designer
Component Inspector Component Palette Source Editor Setting the Form Size |