Chapter 20

Extending the GUI

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• How to create a status bar
• How to create a dialog
• What a modal dialog is and how it differs from a modeless dialog
• How to create a message box dialog
• How you can use components in a dialog to receive input
• What a pop-up menu is
• How you can apply and use transformations to the user coordinate system when drawing on a component
• What context menus are and how you can implement them

In this chapter you investigate how you can improve the graphical user interface (GUI) for Sketcher. After adding a status bar, you create dialogs and explore how you can use them to communicate with the user and manage input. You look at context menus, which are pop-up menus that vary depending on the context in which they are displayed. You use context menus to enhance the functionality of the Sketcher application. All of this gives you a lot more practice in implementing event listeners, and much more besides.