Parents : Curriculum : ICT

6th Form ICT

Creating GUIs with user interaction

Computers are only useful if they can be used, and interacted with by their users. The way in which you interact and send information to any computer that you use is by using a Graphical user interface (GUI), and normally a mouse.

In this short introduction you will produce a GUI that looks like this:

Fig 1  Finished GUI

You can see that the GUI has buttons on it, and as we program the GUI you will see what interactions can be used, and how those interactions are implemented in code. At various points you will be given code samples which you need to type into the program.

The applications you will use to produce this code are Notepad, and Command prompt, both of which can be found in the accessories part of the Windows XP program menu.

Fig2

Creating the initial GUI from the sample code

The first thing you need to do is copy the code from here. The code needs to be saved locally in a file called SwingApplication.java.

To compile the code you need to use a command window, and change into the directory that you have saved your SwingApplication.java file.

To change directory in a command window at the command prompt you type

cd - to change directory

Dir - to find out what files or directories are in your curent directory

For example

Fig 3

To change into the My Documents directory you need to type

C:/> cd My Documents

Fig4

Compile this code by typing. Compiling the code translates it into a type of code that computers understand called machine code.

C:/> javac SwingApplication.java

If this compiles you should find that your directory has:

SwingApplication.java
SwingApplication.class

To run the GUI you use the command

C:/> java SwingApplication

If you have any problems, just ask for help. Then move onto making the GUI interactive.