A Connection Is Made


Ok, so you drew the dialog in part 1 but it's fsckin useless, it doesn't even show up when you run it. Not to worry, when you finish this section, the dialog will show up when you run it. It will also close itself when you click on the Quit button. Woohoo! (ok, it's not that exciting...but it's better then nothing)

Making Stuff Appear

First we want to make a connection from the bean's initializ() method to the show() method of the JFrame. Read over the next few steps and look at the pictures, then go forth and connectify...or something

Right click outside of your JFrame and click Connect... from the menu that pops up

Well, you don't have a lot of choice here. The initialize() event is fired when an instance your Bean is created. We can add listeners to this event, so when it happens, actions we specify are taken. For now, just click Ok

Now you should have a line on the screen following the cursor around (which has changed to a strange-looking little spider shape. Who comes up with these things?). You want to click on the titlebar of the JFrame

Ok, now you'll get a menu of common methods that we can connect to in a JFrame. We want the show() method.

What have we done!?!??!

Well, we connected the initialize() event of the bean to the show() method of the JFrame. This means that whenever the initialize() event is fired, the show() method of the JFrame gets called. Pretty straightforward...

Making Stuff Go Away

We want the Quit button to make the JFrame go away. When you want a button click to have an effect, you make a connection from the ActionPerformed event...

The method that makes a JFrame go away is the dispose() method, so hook the ActionPerformed event up to that.

Are We There Yet?

Yes. Well probably. Your screen should look something like the following picture. If you don't have green lines from the Quit button and the White Void to the JFrame, take another crack at it. If all is well, try clicking the Run button in VAJ. Your JFrame should appear, almost as if by magic. Then click Quit and if you did it right the JFrame will disappear. w3rd! On to the next section...

Part 3: Being Objective

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