Sunday, September 26, 2010

Coming to the end...

Here we go again...

The steelseries library again got some new components but i decided to stop adding components to the library now, otherwise it won't end ;-)

Because i added radial bargraphs i had to add linear bargraphs too, so here they are in horizontal and vertical orientation.

Horizontal...


 Vertical...


As you could see i also added new colors like cyan and magenta to the ColorDef class. After i finished the first version of radial bargraphs it reminds me on a equalizer that i had a long time ago.
This equalizer had a feature called show peak where it shows the last value of the led column a little bit longer. So what should i say...i had to implement to the bargraph components and it looks like this...


This feature has to be enabled and will only be visible if the bargraph is in AutoResetToZero mode which means that the value will automaticaly return to zero after it reached it's value.

In addition to the bargraphs i found it usefull to have a simple led (the same that i used in the components) available as a separate component and so i created it and it looks like this...


The led component is really simple, one could choose between one of the shown colors, it can be on or off and it can blink and that's it. You might want to use it to build some kind of a state indicator.

Finaly i tried to create a set of components that allows you to extend the existing components with your own. As a example i would like to combine a radial frame with a simple lcd display and three leds. On top of all these components should be the same glass effect as on the other components...


For this i created a circular and a rectangular base component (FrameCircular and FrameRectangular). On this components you could add others like the lcd and the three led's.
To cover it with the glass effect you'll find a so called Foreground component that switches it's design by it's parent component. That means if you drop it to a FrameCircular it will be a circular glass effect and if you drop it to a FrameRectangular it will switch to a rectangular glass effect (dependend on the orientation of the rectangular frame).

I did not make extensive tests with this components but my first try looked like this and it worked...


This component was simply created by drag'n drop all the related components in Netbeans from the palette to the canvas.

I hope this little library will be usefull for one or the other and it would be great to hear from you...

Now it's 2 am in the morning and i think it's time for me to get some sleep...