Extending the visual editor for Java

Advanced developers might be interested in extending the visual editor to include custom components or Java beans, customizers, or custom property editors.

The following set of topics help you understand more about the concepts and tasks involved in extending the visual editor for Java:

BeanInfo classes and introspection
If you are creating new components or beans for use within the visual editor (for example, adding components to the palette), you can control their behavior by supplying a BeanInfo class.

Specifying the location of BeanInfo classes
The visual editor requires the BeanInfo classes at design time and run time to determine the behavior of the various components. You can decide where to keep the BeanInfo classes.

Customizers for Java bean properties
A customizer is an additional dialog that users can launch to change Java bean properties. You can create customizer classes for editing properties of Java beans that you add to the visual editor.

Using a customizer to change properties
If a component has a customizer defined for it in its BeanInfo class, a user can use the customizer to update the properties of the component.