Gui on Micha Kops' Tech Notes

Layout Testing with Galen, JUnit and Maven

Mon, 16 May 2016 00:00:00 +0200

Writing tests not only to verify the behaviour of a web site but also the correctness of its layout especially for responsive websites is not always easy.

Luckily the Galen Framework eases the task of writing layout tests for us, offering a specialized domain-specific-language to write layout-specifications, it integrates well with Selenium Grid, Sauce Labs or BrowserStack, it offers an easy way to deal with different browser sizes and responsive designs and it generates nice, detailed test reports.

Creating and Packaging a Game in Java FX 2.2

Sun, 23 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

It’s been a long way for Java FX from the days of the F3 project the current release 2.2. Today there are many options how to create a Java FX application .. you may be using Java, Scala, Groovy or Visage, you may create your application in a programmatic way using the comfortable integrated builders or you may create your views using XML layouts and easy data-bindings with a few annotations.

Creating Rich Clients with Apache Pivot

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Apache Pivot is a modern framework to create rich clients as desktop applications or to run in a web browser.

It offers nice GUI elements, supports XML/WTKX templates, data bindings, JVM scripting languages and much more.

In the following short examples I’m going to create a desktop application to open a file browser, select a file and output the selected file’s name, first using a programmatic approach to create the user interface, and afterwards using XML/WTKX templates.

Android Widget Tutorial: Creating a screen-lock Widget in a few steps

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

In today’s Android tutorial we’re going to take a look at Android’s Widget API and how to make a widget interact with a service using intents.

Figure 1. hasCode Android Widget Tutorial Logo

We’re going to create a fully functional application that allows us to enable or disable our smartphone’s screen lock settings using a widget that can be placed on our home screen.

Finally, I am going to show how to use a smartphone to test and debug our application and connect it to the IDE.

Using PrimeFaces to pimp up existing Java Server Faces / JSF 2 Applications

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100

In this tutorial we’re going to modify an existing Java Server Faces / JSF 2 web application by adding rich UI components to the existing layout.

Our tool of choice here is the PrimeFaces framework. It offers a wide range of interesting, customizable and (several) Ajax-enabled components that blend very well with JSF1+2 and also a solid documentation that allows a quick integration into existing projects.

Project setup

For this tutorial we’re going to reuse the web application from my JSF2 Tutorial “Java Server Faces/JSF 2 Tutorial – Step 1: Project setup, Maven and the first Facelet” – the source code is available at GitHub.org.

How to create an Android App using Google’s App Inventor

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0200

Today we’re going to take a look at Google’s App Inventor feature that offers programming-novices a nice possibility to enter the fabulous world of Android App programming without deeper knowledge of the API or complex SDK installations.

So lets build some stuff ..

Prerequisites

Java 6 JDK
App Inventors Extras Software
A Google App Inventor Beta Account – request one here

What we are going to build

We are building a simple GUI with a Textbox and a button
A click on the button starts an event that queries the acceleration sensor for coordinates
If the sensor is active and enabled then the coordinates are displayed in the text box

Creating a simple Gesture App with Android

Fri, 14 May 2010 00:00:00 +0200

The integration of gestures into your android app adds some nice functionality and is made very easy using Google’s GestureBuilder application and the integrated GestureLibrary and Gesture Overlay API – so let’s build a sample app.

If you need some basic information regarding gestures on android first – take a look at this article.

Creating a gesture library

First you need to define the gestures that should be captured in the application later. For this reason there’s the GestureBuilder delivered with the Android SDK. You can find the app in the samples directory of your android sdk – e.g. <installation-directory>/android-sdk-linux_86/platforms/android-2.1/samples/GestureBuilder.