ButtonBar

The applet gets almost all of the information via parameters. The parameters have to be set in the HTML Code, as part of the <applet> tag (To see how to create the HTML code read the HTML code page).

To use the parameters which specify colors you will need to know how to define colors.
Important info about defining image/audio clip locations and URLs.

The parameters and their function:

(Parameters marked with a * are required)

*	NORMBUTTON	This parameter specifies the image file which shall be displayed for buttons in normal condition (not pressed, not highlighted). It has to be a .GIF or a .JPG (.JPEG respectively) file. Remember that filenames on the Internet are case sensitive! The file name has to be written correct, if you mix up lower and upper case it'll cause errors.
*	HIGHLBUTTON	Not all too difficult to guess, is it? The same rules as above apply, only that this parameter specifies the file to be displayed when a button is highlighted (when the mouse is over a button, but the button is not pressed).
*	PRESSEDBUTTON	It should be obvious...
	SPECNORMBUTTON#	You can give a button a different image than the default one with this parameter. It has to have the same size as the default buttons.
	SPECHIGHLBUTTON#	Same as SPECNORMBUTTON#, only for highlighted status.
	SPECPRESSEDBUTTON#	Same as SPECNORMBUTTON#, only for highlighted status.
	BACKGROUNDIMAGE	A .GIF or .JPG image which will be displayed underneath the button images. It does not necessarily have to be of the same size as the applet. If it is smaller it will be tiled to fill the entire applet area.
	MOUSEOVERSOUND	The sound which is played when the mouse moves from one button to another. The sounds have to be 8 bit, µlaw, 8000 Hz, one-channel Sun ".au" files.
	PRESSEDSOUND	The sound which is played when a button is pressed. The same rules as with "MOUSEOVERSOUND" apply.
	ORIENTATION	Default value is vertical. You can make a horizontal buttonbar by setting this parameter to "horizontal".
	DEFAULTALIGNMENT	Defines the text alignments on the buttons. Legal values are: "left" and "right". Not defining this parameter will center the text on the buttons.
	DEFAULTFONTNAME	Usually the default font name is "Helvetica" (on PCs running MS Windows this font is called "Arial"). You can change the default name with this parameter, which is more easy than changing the font name for every button manually. For more info on font names see "FONTNAME#".
	DEFAULTFONTSTYLE	Usually the default is "PLAIN". Change the default with this parameter. See "FONTSTYLE#".
	DEFAULTFONTSIZE	"Standard default" is 12. See "FONTSIZE#".
	DEFAULTFONTCOLOR	Default is usually black. See also: "FONTCOLOR#". How to define colors
	DEFAULTHIGHLFONTCOLOR	Usually the buttons don't change their font colors when highlighted. If you want them to do so use this parameter. See also: How to define colors
	DEFAULTPRESSEDFONTCOLOR	Same as "DEFAULTHIGHLFONTCOLOR", only for pressed state. See also: How to define colors
	DEFAULTDESTFRAME	If most of the pages have to be displayed in a different frame than the one in which the applet itself is displayed you can specify a default destination frame where all pages will be displayed in. If a single page has to be displayed in a different frame than the default destination frame you have to use the DESTFRAME# parameter.
	BUTTONSSTAYPRESSED	If this parameter is specified the button which was pressed will remain so until another button is pressed. The purpose is to indicate where on a site the viewer is. It doesn't matter which value this parameter has, its pure existence suffices to activate this option.
	STARTBUTTON	If the option "BUTTONSTAYPRESSED" is activated button #1 will be in pressed condition after loading. If you want a different button to be pressed after the applet is loaded you can specify its number with this parameter.
	BUTTONALIGNMENT#	You can set a different text alignment for each button with this parameter. Legal values are "left" and "right".
*	BUTTONTEXT#	The text to be displayed on the button. Make sure it's not too long, the applet won't check the length.
*	DESTURL#	Same as with the TEXT# parameter, but this time you specify the URL to which you want to link this button. URLs can be relative or absolute, even targets should work fine. See also: Important info about defining image/audio clip locations and URLs.
	DESTFRAME#	You can define a frame in which you want to appear a page a button is linked to. But you don't have to, if you don't specify a destination frame, the page will be loaded in the current frame.
	STATUSMESSAGE#	You can define a short statement which will appear in the status bar of your browser when the mouse arrow is over a button. This statement might be a short description of what the page that's going to appear contains.
	FONTNAME#	Every button can have a different font, the name of which you define with this parameter. Valid values are: Dialog Helvetica (On machines running MS Windows this is "Arial") TimesRoman (On machines running MS Windows this is "Times New Roman") Courier DialogInput ZapfDingbats Default is Helvetica.
	FONTSTYLE#	The three valid options are: PLAIN, ITALIC and BOLD. If you skip this parameter the font will be displayed PLAIN.
	FONTSIZE#	Pretty obvious... Of course you can't use all numbers, i.e. a font of the size 100 won't work. Use the font sizes which work also in your word processing tool. Default is 12.
	FONTCOLOR#	If you want a button to have a different font color than the default color for normal status use this parameter. See also: How to define colors
	HIGHLFONTCOLOR#	If you want a button to change its font color when being highlighted use this parameter. See also: "DEFAULTHIGHLFONTCOLOR". How to define colors
	PRESSEDFONTCOLOR#	Same as "HIGHLFONTCOLOR#", only for pressed state. See also: "DEFAULTPRESSEDFONTCOLOR". How to define colors

How to define colors:

Generally, there are two ways to define a color:

HTML-like: In HTML a color is defined by three hexadecimal numbers between 0 and 255. These numbers represent the RGB values, that is the red, green and blue shares of the color. By defining the RGB values you can mix any color you like. For example, to get a red color like this one you had to define the shares like this: Red = 255, Green = 0, Blue = 0. In hexadecimal numbers this would be: Red = FF, Green = 0, Blue = 0. Thus, to define the color red in HTML you would write "ff0000" (it doesn't matter whether you write the letters upper- or lowercase). Many image processing applications have a feature to convert colors to hexadecimal RGB values. If you do not have such an application yet you might wish to visit www.jasc.com and download the shareware version of "Paint Shop Pro".
Shortcuts: I built in shortcuts for some of the most common colors. The shortcuts are:

black (is also default)
blue
cyan
darkgray
gray
green
lightgray
magenta
orange
pink
red
white
yellow

Defining image/audio clip locations and URLs

You can specify URLs in two ways: either you give the applet just a filename or you specify an entire URL. If you use just a filename with no path information, the applet will automatically add the path of the HTML document to create a complete URL.

Example:

If one of your "DestURL#" parameters links to: "buttonbar_mainframe.html", the applet will automatically add the document's path to this. The complete URL (which the applet will use to call the document) will be:

http://welcome.to/javaforall/buttonbar_mainframe.html

(assuming that "http://welcome.to/javaforall" is the URL where the HTML document is residing).

You can also link to pages which are stored in subdirectories. A link to a page which is in a subdirectory called "html_documents" would look like this:

html_documents/buttonbar_mainframe.html

(of course the applet will add the path of the HTML document to this, as it is not a complete URL).

Image locations are different. You cannot use a complete URL to define an image location. The applet will always add the URL of the HTML document into which the applet is embedded to the location. But of course you can also use subdirectories.

Back to ButtonBar

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