Lesson: Performing Custom Painting
This lesson describes custom painting in Swing.
Many programs will get by just fine
without writing their own painting code; they will simply use the
standard GUI components that are already available in the Swing API. But if you need specific control
over how your graphics are drawn, then this lesson is for you.
We will explore custom painting by creating
a simple GUI application that draws a shape
in response to the user's mouse activity.
By intentionally
keeping its design simple, we can focus on the underlying
painting concepts, which in turn will relate to other GUI applications
that you develop in the future.
This lesson explains
each concept in steps as you construct the demo application.
It presents the code as soon as possible with a minimum amount
of background reading.
Custom painting in
Swing is similar to custom painting in AWT, but since we do not recommend
writing
your applications entirely with the AWT, its painting mechanism is not specifically
discussed here. You may find it useful to read this lesson
followed by the
in-depth discussion of
Painting in AWT and Swing
on the Sun Developer Network (SDN).
