Chapter 15. SWT CoolBars
Chapter 4
demonstrated
the creation and use of SWT ToolBars. This chapter
examines another set of classes that can be used to create
ToolBar-like constructs—the SWT
CoolBar
and CoolItem
classes from the
org.eclipse.swt.widgets package.
A CoolBar is like a ToolBar on
steroids. Like ToolBar and
ToolItems, CoolBar is a
container to which you add instances of the
CoolItem class.Although a
ToolItem object appears as a button on the
ToolBar, a CoolItem serves only
as a container for other widget types—Combo,
Text, or Button. This makes a
CoolBar a massively useful interface construct. In
fact, the Eclipse toolbar is actually a CoolBar
and is a great example of how to leverage the capability of the
CoolBar and CoolItem classes to
enable the user to customize the user interface.
Creating a CoolBar
The steps required to create a CoolBar
are similar to those required to create a ToolBar,
except that an instance of CoolBar is created
instead of ToolBar and instances of
CoolItem are created in place of the
ToolItem instances for the individual buttons. The
similarity ends there, however.
The CoolItem objects created serve only as
containers for other widgets. If you want to create a
CoolBar similar in appearance to the
ToolBar from Chapter 4, you must create individual
Button objects that are added to the corresponding
CoolItem. A good understanding of
CoolBar can be gained by going through the process
of creating a CoolBar similar in appearance to the
ToolBar created ...
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