How to make dock-able plugins for NetBeans IDE in Java?

Question

I have created one analogue clock with Java. But i want to make it dock-able in NetBeans IDE (like shown in the screen shot).

• like the left side navigator, files, bottom tasks are hidden, once i press it it shows in left or bottom

Any help on this, how can i tell my NetBeans plugin to act like dock-able? After making it working i would like to publish it to the community plugin.

Answer 1

This is not too complicated using the NetBeans Rich Client Platform. Follow this tutorial - http://platform.netbeans.org/tutorials/nbm-paintapp.html#impMod

Basically, you'll create a ClockTopComponent using the wizard. TopComponents automatically get nice windowing features for free, like docking, hiding, tiling, etc.

FAQs about TopComponent