Java AWT application skeleton

(main window screenshot)

This is a screenshot of a free application skeleton available to you. All java programs tend to have pretty much the same required "skeleton" behind them. Rather than having to write it over and over each time, you are welcome to use this one for your own programs.

To try it out, download and run

appskeleton.jar
You may note that if you minimize the program, it even displays its own icon, included in the jar file!

To grab the source code conveniently, you can take appskeleton-src.jar. If your local extraction programs dont recognize it, you can just rename it to a .zip if need be. Or, you could go to command line, and use "jar", which is part of java itself:
jar xvf appskeleton-src.jar

Alternatively, feel free to browse the program source files directly here:

JavaApp.java
ErrDialog.java
About.java

As you can see, it's not super fancy, but it does show beginners a few key things all in one place, such as:

The look of the program is rather sparse. That is because it uses the "AWT" GUI rather than "Swing" or "SWT", or .....

There are lots of fancier toolkits, but they all tend to take lots more work,and require bundling lots of libraries in with your application. In contrast, this jar file works anywhere java does, and is only 13,000 bytes in size.
Read that again: bytes

For your convenience, oracle has a reference of AWT classes online. You can see it in 'tree' form, in summary form, or if you prefer, in a framed page

A full java (oldschool) language reference is at http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/overview-summary.html

Java 6 API reference:

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/index.html

Java 7 API reference:

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/index.html

Oreilly book on AWT

This looks like a book ad, but its actually a free way to read the book by downloading chapter PDFs: http://oreilly.com/openbook/javawt/book/index.html
If you have any suggestions, comments, or "hey, it works on platform xxx, cool", drop me a line!
email phil@bolthole.com , or use the feedback form

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