For your first JavaBean, let's look at the BDK BeanBox. Although in this tutorial we use the BeanBox to create a JavaBean, the BeanBox is generally used to test your JavaBeans. The BeanBox is considered a reference builder tool environment. It is not designed for building GUI applications, nor is it meant to have a look and feel of such other builder tools as Visual Age, Delphi, or Visual Basic.

You can create a JavaBean and then use the BeanBox to test that it runs properly. If a JavaBean runs properly in the BeanBox, you can be sure that it works properly with other commercial builder tools.

Starting the BeanBox

When you start the BeanBox, you'll see three windows:

• ToolBox window
• BeanBox window
• Properties window

The ToolBox window displays the JavaBeans that are currently installed in the BeanBox, such as the Beans the come with the BeanBox demo. When the BeanBox starts, it automatically loads its ToolBox with the Beans in the JAR files contained in the bean/jars directory. You can add additional Beans, such as your own Beans, to the ToolBox. The next lesson, Writing a Simple JavaBean, explains how to add Beans to the ToolBox.

The BeanBox window itself appears initially as an empty window. You use this empty window, sometimes referred to as a "form" by other builder tools, for building applications.

The third window, the Properties window, displays the current properties for the selected Bean. If no Bean is selected, such as when you first start the BeanBox or if you click in the BeanBox window's background, then the Properties window displays the BeanBox properties. You can use the Properties window or sheet to edit a Bean's properties.

Using the BDK BeanBox

Using the Demo BDK JavaBeans

The easiest way to understand how the BeanBox works is to use it. The BeanBox enables you to construct simple Beans applications without writing any Java code. As a first example, you can build a simple "Juggling Duke" application in which Duke will start or stop juggling depending on which of two buttons you push.

In this lesson, you'll learn how to:

• Drop Beans from the ToolBox into the BeanBox and change their properties using the Properties sheet and associated property editors.

Creating your Bean

We'll start by dropping the Juggler Bean from the ToolBox into an empty BeanBox.

1. Click on Juggler Bean to select from the list of Beans in the Toolbox window.

Notice that the cursor changes to a crosshair.

1. Place the cursor anywhere in the BeanBox, then click the mouse.

This inserts a Juggler Bean into the BeanBox window. The highlighted box surrounding the Juggler indicates the Juggler is the currently selected bean.

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