Tinkering around with Google Drive desktop application, I noticed, its sole UI is just a native Windows Explorer. The interesting part behind it, is the background process (googledrivesync.exe), that constently checks if any changes had taken place in that folder. If any changes occured it will sync them with the online drive, ok.
What made me wonder, when you drop a file, a small status icon will be painted over the file's own icon:
Now, this is not a one-time draw - I noticed. Look, If you change the view to large tiles the size of the icons also get larger:
It can't be that it registers the icon, somewhere in the - say - Registry Editor, or so; because, if I force to stop the processes (by Task Manager) and refresh the Explorer, they disappear. That gives me the feeling that it is a real-time paint.
This made me really curious, 'Does it really check if I change my view, or maybe there's a clean (native) way to accomplish this? And how?'.
Although this could've been asked on any language, I chose Java, because that's what I use.
Related
I have made a light weight java web-server serving html files and static content (made with pure java library nanohttpd), i have successfully made a javaFX launcher window that has a single button, clicking button simply runs the server in the background and opens the localhost URL in Android/PC browser (I was unsuccessful in making an IOS version using javaFX)
I am thinking of using libGDX as "launcher window" because of IOS support and access to mobile specific hardware like SMS/GPS which javaFX don't have.
I am targeting IOS/Android/PC, I'd like to ask libGDX developers how possible is this given my target platforms?
Yes you can
There's a catch though, you may have to build the UI the game dev way
I've made a game or two using it and had rather steep learning curve in the beginning to get a hold on to how it worked. For example you'll have to provide the images for button, background and also, the pressed view of the button... like that. But your app is not a game. So you won't have to worry that much.
Once you learned how to place them in the screen successfully, there is not much to worry about because the API provides everything you need to carry on from there.
Also I found enough resources/tutorials online enough to make a game from ground up. So you'll definitely can.
And there's very little to worry about your multi-platform problem.
I'm looking for a really simple widget: tree view on the left pane, folder contents on the right, switchable between icons, thumbnails, or detail view. Basically a functional (not pixel for pixel) emulation of Windows File Explorer, but within the Java app. How to do this using only built-in Java libraries? Or a very lightweight framework?
NOT A DUPLICATE
My question is different from the above and I now realize it's a little harder to explain than I initially expected. Two clarifications:
My question is not about a File Chooser. I'm asking about a File Explorer type of dialog. The difference is that a File Chooser is really focused on one task, choosing a file. A File Explorer is a little less focused, and lets the user browse around without a clear objective.
My question is not about native operating system UI / L&F emulation. At all. I'm asking about the basic capability to display the contents of the filesystem using icons and thumbnails. The style and borders etc are not part of my question.
EDIT
I'm looking for something like this
Notice how it's different from this (JFileChooser)
JFileChooser will do that if you are wanting something built in to Java.
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/javax/swing/JFileChooser.html
If you are not using Swing but SWT (like Eclipse) you can use SWT FileDialog
You could use the AWT library to customly render the entirety of Explorer. Whilst the only hard part about this is correctly using layout managers to get components exactly where you want them and adding event listeners for each button, using AWT wouldn't make it look like Explorer on different operating systems because AWT uses the native system components.
You could check if the OS is not Windows and then use Swing if it isn't. In that case, you'd have to retexture every single used component such that its look and feel is the same as your targeted Windows version. Even if you did that, you'd still have to somehow change the JFrame's look and feel, which is possible using dark magic, but quite obscur. You can do this in a very quirky way, just setUndecorated(true) and manipulate the JFrame's boundaries until it lets you draw outside the JFrame, so that you can draw the Windows' decoration around it without resizing the Window. On top of that, you'd also have to check if it's maximised, as maximized windows don't quite look the same in Windows.
To cut things short, just use JFileChooser if you just want to allow the user to select one or multiple files. There isn't really any point in recreating Explorer, but if that's what you want to do, I'm not stopping you.
I've had this error before in pydev perspectives in the past, and the only solution I've ever managed was to remove the broken perspective and start a new one.
The problem is this:
Normally the different panes of the workspace can be minimized, maximized, and regular size. Right now, I cannot get the "shared area" code section of the debug perspective to show up at all. I can peak at it while it's minimized, but that's all I can manage.
What's more, eclipse automatically switches to debug, so it's basically impossible for me to debug code right now.
I'd really like to know why this is happening to me, and how to avoid and/or fix it.
Also, I'm currently running java 7, I have not updated yet.
You can go to Window, Reset Perspective which will give you your shared area back, although also obviously reset any other views you may have.
Sometime ago I was facing the problem the other way around: how to drag an item (folder/file) from an explorer window (be it windows explorer, linux nautilus etc.) to the browser window - that is, the drag starts in one application and ends in the browser. Since I had control over the browser, I was able to intercept the dragend event: the one which interested me.
Now, I want to do this from the browser to the file explorer application: much like when you drag an image from firefox and drop it in a folder.
My main problem is that while I can check when the drag event exited the browser window, I have no ideea how to get the location where the drag event finished.
My ideea is to create a signed java applet and somehow track the mouse movement on the desktop - but this seems a little more than overkill.
Any pointers on this?
According to your justification is is not simple, but it can be managed. There is class called DataFlavor. You had to use D&D mechanism introduce in java using Transferable objects and provide correct mime-types and corresponding conversion. The problem is which mime-type will be accepted by explorer. I hope this help.
You won't be able to do this with JavaScript. JS is sandboxed in the browser and can't interact with anything outside.
I am creating an application that is essentially a financial alerts site. I am a basic level Java programmer, and I have created some of the logic for alerts in Java.
I want to be able to have pop-ups appear on the desktop whenever something "interesting" happens (interesting depends on %change, liquidity and a few other simple factors).
What is the best combo of technology to implement something like this?
I would use the java.awt.SystemTray in Java SE 6. It's cross-platform and pretty easy to use.
Although some people hate the balloon notifications in Windows, they're the least obtrusive popups, since they can be ignored by the user or easily dismissed. Most importantly, they can't be missed by the user who has been away from the computer, because balloons (at least in Windows XP/Vista) use system idle timers to determine when's the right time to disappear.
Some prefer more traditional toast notifications, similar to those shown by Outlook - they show up and slowly fade out, giving the user some time to interact with them if needed.
I had the same problem and finally solved it using an undecorated, alwaysOnTop window.
And thanks to this blog entry I found the TimingFramework, and now it even is translucent, fades in and out, goes 100% opaque on mouse over etc. In conjunction with the SystemTray and TrayIcon the behavior is nearly as that of Outlook.
Oh, I have to note, that other than the second link, I do the fading out with
AWTUtilities.setWindowOpacity(window, op);
You could write a java program that resides in the system tray, but I am not sure if there are cross platform compatible ways to do this. maybe you have to use a platform specific library for Win, Mac, Linux, ...
I'd just create a message window and animate it. Then add SystemTray support and voila, you're done.
In Delphi you can do that pretty quickly, but you can't easily reuse your java logic
You can just run you program in "silent" mode, without creating any windows by default, maybe just a little icon in the taskbar which when double-clicked will open a settings window. The program will be running in the background and creating windows with the set focus whenever an event happens.
But in my opinion, a slide window or at least a balloon tooltip is a better idea.