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Tutorial Index

AWT Fundamentals
Exercises

By jGuru

About This Short Course   Short Course  Exercises

Exercise Outline

Welcome to the jGuru exercises for the AWT Fundamentals short course.

These exercises show how to use the Abstract Window Toolkit components to interact with forms and windows.

These exercises demonstrate how to use the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) components and events within your Java technology applications. The exercises include stand-alone programs as well as applets that let you learn how to create and interact with AWT components within your programs.

When you finish these exercises, you will know the basic steps for designing and developing AWT-based Java programs for client-side computing.

About Exercises

A jGuru exercise is a flexible exercise that provides varying levels of help according to the student's needs. Some students may complete the exercise using only the information and the task list in the exercise body; some may want a few hints (Help); while others may want a step-by-step guide to successful completion (Solution). Since complete solutions are provided in addition to help, students can skip an exercise and still be able to complete later exercises that required the skipped one(s).

The Anatomy of an Exercise

Each exercise includes a list of any prerequisite exercises, a list of skeleton code for you to start with, links to necessary API pages, and a text description of the exercise's educational goal. In addition, buttons link you to the following information:

  • Help: Gives you help or hints on the current exercise, an annotated solution. For ease of use, the task information is duplicated on the help page with the actual help information indented beneath it.
  • Solution: The <applet> tag and Java source resulting in the expected behavior.
  • API Documentation: A link directly to any necessary online API documentation.

Exercise Design Goals

There are three fundamental exercise types that you may encounter:

"Blank screen"
You are confronted with a "blank screen" and you create the entire desired functionality yourself.
Extension
You extend the functionality of an existing, correctly-working program.
Repair
You repair undesirable behavior in an existing program.

To make learning easier, exercises, where possible, address only the specific technique being taught in that exercise. Irrelevant, unrelated, and overly complex materials are avoided.

Where possible, exercises execute on the Web. However, exercises that must access Java features or library elements that could cause security violations are not executed on the web.

AWT Fundamentals Exercises

Exercises

  • Component Madness

    Create a simple GUI by adding components to an applet.

    Educational goal(s):

    • Learn how to construct components.
    • Learn how to add components to an applet.

  • Selecting Students and Courses

    Create a simple applet to allow users to select a student and a course from a List and a Choice component.

    Educational goal(s):

    • Learn how to create components with multiple choices.

  • Beeping Mouse

    Create an applet that beeps each time the user clicks a mouse button.

    Educational goal(s):

    • Understand the source-target event model.
    • Learn how to listen for mouse button events.

  • Counting Mouse Clicks

    Create an applet that counts and displays the number of times a button has been pressed.

    Educational goal(s):

    • Understand the source-target event model.
    • Learn how to process command button actions.

  • Counting Key Presses

    Create an applet that counts and displays the total number of key presses.

    Educational goal(s):

    • Understand the source-target event model.
    • Learn how to process key events.

  • Using the List Component

    Create an applet that displays items in a list and responds to item selections.

    Educational goal(s):

    • Understand the source-target event model.
    • Understand how to process item events.

  • Phonebook Searching

    Create a phonebook look-up applet that displays the phone number for the person selected and looks up the name for an entered phone number.

    Educational goal(s):

    • Understand the source-target event model.
    • Learn how to listen for action events for buttons and text fields.
    • Learn how to listen for pull-down list changes.
    • Learn how to listen for keystrokes to restrict input.
    • Learn how to use event adapters as well as event listeners.

  • Radio Buttons

    Create an applet with two radio buttons that allow the user to choose between two opinions of the Java programming language.

    Educational goal(s):

    • Learn how to use the Checkbox widget.
    • Learn about grouping them into a CheckboxGroup.
    • Understand how to process item events.

  • Displaying Files

    This exercise produces an application rather than an applet. This application demonstrates GUI design within the primary application window.

    Educational goal(s):

    • Learn how to work with a Frame.
    • Learn how to use a List.

  • Converting an Applet to an Application

    Create an applet so that it appears within a Frame rather than in a browser.

    Educational goal(s):

    • To understand how to convert an applet into an application.

  • OK Dialog

    Create and open a dialog box that waits for the user to hit the "OK" button before it disappears and the applet finishes. Have the applet add the label "Back from dialog..." to its display when the dialog box has returned. Hide and dispose of the dialog box right before adding the label.

    Educational goal(s):

    • Learn how to work with a Dialog.
    • Learn how to deal with modal dialogs.

  • Display a File from FileDialog

    Create an application that instantiates and shows a FileDialog instance. Use getFile() to obtain the selected filename and display it as a label on the screen.

    Educational goal(s):

  • Menus

    Given an application (or applet) that constructs a Frame instance set up with a "File" menu, create a "Help" menu that uses MenuItem objects.

    Educational goal(s):

    • Learn how to work with menus.

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[ This page was updated: 21-Sep-2000 ]
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