Tutorial updated!

James Simmons — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 17:56:36 -0000

The tutorial was long overdue for an update, so here it is. I have removed most Visual Age for Java information and given info on current IDEs. I have also described how to use the NiceCanonicalMenu (or at least explained which sample apps to study to understand how it works).

NiceSTEP now uses JTextComponents!

James Simmons — Sat, 11 Oct 2003 21:28:24 -0000

I have come to the conclusion that I have neither the time nor the ability to make NiceTextArea into a really good text editing control with word wrap. However, I have fixed the bugs in NiceScrollPane that prevented me from using it in combination with JTextArea for text editing. As a result, the whole world of Java Swing text editing, even formatted text editing and displaying web pages, is now available to NiceSTEP. In addtion to that, now you can create applications that use JTables and have the scrollbars placed where they truly belong.

NiceTextArea supports word-wrap, tabs, and spell checking

James Simmons — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 20:47:32 -0000

NiceTextArea has been modified to add word-wrap and
tab support. In addition, the NiceCanonicalMenu
supports using a new Interface to create menu items
on the Services menu. Two classes implement
this interface so far: a word counter and a spell
checker that uses the ispell utility to provide
interactive spell checking and correction. Thus
NiceSTEP Editor and other apps that use NiceTextAreas and canonical menus can spell
check text.

In addition to that, NiceSTEP CD Burner now can
act as a front end to GNU vcdimager and cdrdao
to create Video CDs (VCDs).

NiceSTEP Address Book Browser

James Simmons — Wed, 19 Jun 2002 16:05:56 -0000

The latest NiceSTEP application lets you search LDAP directories by Common Name, select entries that you find, and export their data to a file in LDIF format. Among other things this lets you copy address book entries from Lotus Notes into the address book of GNUMail.app, the excellent GNUstep mail program. This utility, combined with GNUMail.app's ability to access Lotus Notes through IMAP makes GNUMail.app an excellent replacement for the Notes mail client.

In addition, since I have started to use GNUstep more and more lately I have made some attempt to make NiceSTEP conform more closely to the GNUstep look and feel.

Finally, many (but not all) bugs have been fixed.

NiceSTEP yEnc Decoder!

James Simmons — Mon, 18 Mar 2002 22:21:09 -0000

If you have been on Usenet recently you have probably noticed more and more binaries being encoded with the yEnc format. This format enables you to download more content with much less bandwidth, but the downside is that your news reader may not support decoding yEnc attachments. NiceSTEP yEnc Decoder enables you to decode yEnc encoded articles that have been saved as text files, so now you can get the binaries you have been missing. Most decoding utilities are command line tools, but NiceSTEP yEnc Decoder has an attractive an useable GUI with drag and drop and the great look of NeXTSTEP.

Also in this release I finally got NiceScrollPane working well so now you can use scrollable Swing components in your NiceSTEP apps and have them scrolled with NeXT-style scrollbars properly positioned left and bottom.

NiceSTEP now uses JDK 1.2 features

James Simmons — Mon, 18 Feb 2002 11:46:06 -0000

NiceSTEP formerly was restricted to JDK 1.1.x features of Java because that was a limitation of the Visual Age for Java for Linux IDE I was using. I am now using Eclipse instead, which supports JDK 1.3, and this has given me the opportunity to improve printing, including more font choices, and to add features like drag and drop file management to NiceDirectoryNavigator and NiceListbox. This release also extends the application framework to make it easier to add your own menu options to the canonical menu and as usual it includes many bug fixes.

NiceSTEP application framework

James Simmons — Wed, 07 Nov 2001 23:29:14 -0000

With release 4.0 NiceSTEP goes beyond being a simple set of widgets and takes its first tentative steps into being an application framework. The new component NiceCanonicalMenu and new interfaces in package nicestep.menu.interfaces form the basis of this framework. What it gives you is a menu that has the recommended format from the NeXTSTEP User Interface Guidelines already built and which allows you to add new menu items as needed. The procedure to use the menu is to implement the needed interfaces in your components and register them with the menu. In this way, for instance, Find/Replace and Cut/Copy/Paste menus are automatically supported when a text editing component that needs them gains the focus. Check out NiceSTEP Editor and SlideProjector to see examples of this framework in use.

Also new in this release submenus tear off and list boxes may optionally have their items reordered through dragging them with the mouse.

NiceSTEP Java Tar now available!

James Simmons — Sat, 07 Apr 2001 23:00:05 -0000

Another sample application has been added to NiceSTEP: a Java Tar/Zip utility that performs most of the functions of the popular WinZip utility but which is cross platform. This might simplify creating releases for your SourceForge project. Java Tar from http://trustice.com is required to run this utility.

Check out the tutorial!

James Simmons — Sun, 11 Mar 2001 21:24:52 -0000

NiceSTEP now has a tutorial, available in both postscript and pdf formats. The tutorial explains how to use NiceSTEP components to create your own applications and how to create your own lightweight Java components. Download either one from the project summary page.

Use NiceSTEP with Swing!

James Simmons — Mon, 19 Feb 2001 14:52:29 -0000

With this latest release NiceSTEP can be considered feature complete. It includes a new component NiceScrollPane that manages JViewports like JScrollPane does and can be used to scroll Swing components like JTable and JTextArea, but with NiceScrollbars left and bottom. Since NiceSTEP components are lightweight you can use them to replace any Swing component you like with no ill effects. See the website for screenshots of the Sun demo SwingSet spiffed up with NiceSTEP components.

Also with this release the AppMenu components are greatly improved. They look better and they work much better.

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