Swing Hacks

Add Windows Resize Icons #35

Chapter 5, Windows, Dialogs, and Frames

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181

HACK

The final hack looks like Figure 5-1, with the titlebar and window controls

hidden and the entire component draggable.

H A C K

#35

Add Windows Resize Icons Hack #35

The Windows resize icons aren’t built into Java. Here’s how to make your own.

Windows has two standard icons to let users know that they can resize a

window. I can’t tell you why there are two or how to decide between them,

but I can tell you how to reproduce both of them in Java. Note that this

hack is concerned with painting the icons accurately—it will be up to your

code to handle events on components that use these icons and handle them

appropriately.

A Tale of Two Icons

First take a look at the two icons. Figure 5-2 shows the icon used by Win-

dows Explorer, MS Paint, and other applications; Figure 5-3 shows the icon

used by Word and other Office applications.

The Icon Interface

The easiest and most flexible way to implement these icons is through the

Icon interface. Using Icon allows you to change an icon’s appearance easily

if you need to match new system defaults. It’s also a lot easier to implement

transparency with an

Icon than by making an image from the corner icon

using a screen capture and editing it in a professional graphics application

like Photoshop.

Figure 5-1. A draggable calendar