Monday September 07, 2009
Monday September 07, 2009
Planning the NetBeans Platform Refcard
Overview of items/lists/tables for upcoming NetBeans Platform Refcard on DZone (in random/brainstorm order):
- General Topics
- What the base NetBeans Platform consists of
- What each module is used for
- What's new in the current release of NetBeans Platform
- Getting Started in 5 Steps
- Recently deprecated classes and idioms (here)
- Old vs. new ways of doing things
- Top 10 questions asked on the mailing list
- "Gotchas", e.g., palette only shows for TopComponent in 'editor' mode, need to associate ExplorerUtils.Lookup with TopComponent to get the actions to work
- E-mail addresses and URLs that everyone should know
- Go through books and find lists
- API-Related Topics
- General API Topics
- Main APIs
- Top 10 lesser known but very useful APIs
- List of minimum set of APIs that everyone should be familiar with
- All annotations and their attributes
- What API wizards are available and what they do
- Utility classes and methods, such as ImageUtilities, NbDocument.findLineNumber, WeakListener, HtmlBrowser.URLDisplayer
- Lookup API Topics
- List the three kinds of Lookup
- List the methods on Lookup
- List what is in the lookup, by default, of NetBeans components (WindowManager, TopComponent, ExplorerManager, ExplorerView, Node, DataObject, FileObject)
- FileSystem API Topics
- Layer attributes of actions
- Layer attributes of TopComponents
- Tips for using layer.xml
- File-level MIME type XML file
- FreeMarker templating
- Conversion table for File, FileObject, DataObject, Node
- List of NetBeans Platform extension points
- List of all DTDs and Schemas (e.g., for TopComponentGroup)
- Explorer View API & Nodes API Topics
- Properties of property sheets (here)
- Properties for explorer views
- List of explorer views
- List of active/non-active explorer views
- Children classes (ChildFactory, Children.Keys, Children.Array, Children.Index)
- Node classes (Node, AbstractNode, DataNode)
- Node-level default actions
- Actions API Topics
- List of actions (CallBackSystemAction, etc)
- Window System API Topics
- Window system client properties
- List of default modes
- Describe consequences of mode definitions, e.g., 'editor' vs. 'view' and 'joined' vs 'separated'
- Property change events on the registry of the WindowManager
- Dialogs API
- List of Dialogs API dialogs & messages
- List of Wizard API classes
- List of notification-related APIs
- Visual Library API
- List of widgets in Visual Library
- Project API
- Project-level default actions
- General API Topics
- Using Main Features of the NetBeans Platform
- List of reusable Swing components: Output window, Favorites window, Plugins manager, exporer views, Palette, Options window, and how to include them in your application.
- Window system: Check the related checkbox in Project Properties
- Modularity
- Persistence: what can be persisted (TopComponent, Node, Document, Visual Library Scene) and how
- Lifecycle management: from main method, to ModuleInstall, to LifecycleManager, to restarting
- Long running tasks: RequestProcessor, asynchronous actions, and Progress API
- Branding: icons, locales, labels, "branding" folder
Basically, the refcard should provide a centralized and, importantly, DEFINITIVE place where settings such as 'suppressCustomEditor' (for removing the "..." button on property sheets) can be located.
More? Leave a comment.
Sep 07 2009, 01:06:28 AM PDT Permalink
5 Comments
Trackback URL: http://blogs.sun.com/geertjan/entry/planning_the_netbeans_platform_refcard
Comments:
It will be useful to get information about:
1) Common server API
2) Progress API
3) Execution API
4) MultiView Windows
Maybe, some of these API's rarely used, but I think this information will be helpfully to developers, if they will work with this API. (For example, I couldn't find more information about API from items 1 and 3 in my list)
Posted by Alexander on September 07, 2009 at 01:21 AM PDT #
Are you sure that the link is correct? It points to MarkMail...
Posted by jmborer on September 07, 2009 at 01:45 AM PDT #
How about RTC vs. RPC?
Notification?
UpdateCenter / Kits ?
Posted by Sven Reimers on September 07, 2009 at 03:26 PM PDT #
The warmup vs. ModuleInstall issue is worth mentioning (or, exclusively pointing to the former, perhaps).
Posted by Chas Emerick on September 08, 2009 at 09:05 AM PDT #
Hi,
I would add a "Further info" section that links to useful places. I'd include there to the NB Community Documentation, to the Platform homepage & tutorials, to the mailing lists, to the API index, to the downloads (including sources) sections, to the books available...
When I started learning it took me a long time to find out where the info was. I think that having it all grouped in a refcard is handy and saves time.
It's a great idea to create a refcard for the Platform.
Cheers,
Antonio
Posted by Antonio on September 08, 2009 at 12:46 PM PDT #
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