How to Develop a Draggable Applets?

[N I C K]

Hi friends,
I have done lot of things in an Applets. Now I am told to do applet which can be dragged outside of the browser. I have never done such of type of things before. So thought that there might be someone who knows about this applet.!! Please help me by telling how to Develop a Draggable Applets? Please provide the coding so that I can use it.!!

[Warner]

I think that before using the draggable applets you should know about it, otherwise you will find tough while doing the coding. An applet that is deployed by specifying the draggable parameter can be dragged outside of the browser and dynamically transformed into a Java Web Start application. You can drag an applet by pressing the Alt key and the left mouse button and dragging the mouse. When you start doing the drag operation, the applet is removed from its parent container and placed in a new undecorated top-level window. Now in this the parent container are Applet or JApplet and the top-level window are Frame or JFrame.

[Allan.d]

After specifying the draggable parameter and when you drag the applet, a small floating Close button is displayed next to the dragged applet. The applet is placed back in the browser when you click the floating Close button. Since the applets can be dragged out of the browser, it is called as draggable applets. In the following way you can customize the behavior of a draggable applet :

• You can add a desktop shortcut. This shortcut can be used to launch your application outside of the browser.
• You can also change the keystroke and mouse button sequence that is used to drag the applet outside of the browser.
• You can define how the applet should be closed after it has been dragged outside of the browser.

[CodGuru]

According to me you should be knowing much about the applets that can be dragged. You can enable the capability to drag an applet by setting the draggable parameter to true when deploying the applet. The following code demonstrates the same :

<script src="URL goes here"></script>
<script> 
    var attributes = { code:'MenuChooserApplet', width:800, height:200 };
    var parameters = {jnlp_href: 'draggableapplet.jnlp', draggable: 'true'} ;
    deployJava.runApplet(attributes, parameters, '1.6');
</script>

[MELTRONICS]

You can customize the applets accordingly. In that you can change the keystroke and mouse button sequence that is used to drag an applet by implementing the isAppletDragStart method. The applet can be dragged by pressing the left mouse button and dragging the mouse which is shown in the sample of coding :

public boolean isAppletDragStart(MouseEvent me) {
        if(me.getID() == MouseEvent.MOUSE_DRAGGED) {
            return true;
        } else {
            return false;
        }
    }

[Solitario]

You can define how your applet can be closed. I have explained you with the following example in which MenuChooserApplet class receives the close listener and passes it on to the instance of the MenuItemChooser class :

MenuItemChooser display = null;
...
show= new MenuItemChooser();
...
public void setAppletCloseListener(ActionListener al) {
    show.setCloseListener(al);
}

public void appletRestored() {
    show.setCloseListener(null);
}