DESIGN VIEW is the summary of the complete DESIGN SOLUTION contributed article, which begins on Page 2.
Full article begins on Page 2
Writing desktop applications has always been about compromises. If you want your application to be truly native, you need to select the platform and use its frameworks, tool kits, and low-level application programming interfaces (APIs) to build your application, using whatever programming language(s) it supports. While you'll certainly give up cross-platform portability, you will be able to provide users with the exact look and feel they expect.
But what if you want your application to run on multiple platforms? The most common solution has been to write Java applications that use a Swing user interface. With this approach, you'll gain support for multiple platforms. But you'll lose the use of native user-interface (UI) widgets and dialogs, which will jeopardize the native look and feel that's critical for end-user acceptance. If Java is to be a viable language for desktop applications, we need to be able to write cross-platform Java applications that use a native UI.
This is where Eclipse steps in. While most Java developers are familiar with Eclipse, they tend to think of it simply as a Java integrated development environment (IDE). However, when viewed at that level, Eclipse is unique because it looks like a native application upon whatever platform it is run. If you dig a little deeper, you'll see that the IDE is simply a specific type of application built on top of the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP), which is part of Eclipse 3.0
The RCP is a platform for building applications. And because the IDE is built on top of the RCP, we have a rather compelling body of evidence that it's both extensible and flexible enough to support the construction of world-class applications with a native UI.
The article presents a step-by-step procedure for building an image viewer on top of an Eclipse RCP framework, including the appropriate code.
Full article begins on Page 2