Apple WebObjects 5 - Manual (Page 84)

84 Development Tasks and Tools
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Apple Computer, Inc. January 2002
C H A P T E R 6
WebObjects Desktop Applications
Creating the User Interface (Non-Direct)
A Java Client WebObjects application gives you considerable flexibility in how you
compose its user interface. Ideally you provide an application’s entire user interface
in a single Java application that runs on the client. But you can also combine Java
Client applets and static and dynamic (WebObjects) HTML elements in various
ways. You can have pages with or without Java Client applets or pages with
multiple Java Client applets. For example, you could have a login page that takes
the user to one of many Java Client pages based on some piece of account data. In
addition, Java Client applets are not limited to the downloaded JFC components; as
with any applet, they can create dialogs and secondary windows on the fly.
If your application’s user interface uses static and dynamically generated HTML,
you create those parts of the user interface in the normal way with WebObjects
Builder (as described in
“HTML-Based Applications” (page 37)). The process is
different for creating a Java Client application or applet. Instead of using
WebObjects Builder to create the user interface, you use an application called
Interface Builder.
In Interface Builder, you typically construct a user interface by dragging widgets
from a palette and dropping them into a window, as shown in
Figure 6-8 . It does
more, however, than simple user interface layout. Interface Builder also lets you
create, edit, and connect objects so they can communicate with one another at
runtime.
Note: If you’re familiar with Cocoa development, the process for creating a Java
Client user interface is nearly the same as the one for creating a Cocoa user
interface for Mac OS X applications.