Special Edition Using Java 2 Standard Edition

Creating and Using Properties

Previously in Figure 29.1, notice that the TextDisplayer Bean displayed itself with a white background and black text. It did so because that's how you set its properties in the default constructor. If you had set the FontColor property to red, it would have displayed the text in red. If the properties of a component cannot be changed by another Bean (or any other class that uses it), the usefulness of the Bean is reduced, as well as the reusability. For example, if you used the TextDisplayer Bean in an accounting package, you would need to change the Bean's FontColor property to red to indicate a negative value. So how do you let other Beans know that they can set (or read) this property? If you're coding from scratch, ...