Re: architecture for gui status bar messages

From:

"Oliver Wong" <owong@castortech.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.software-eng,comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Fri, 05 May 2006 19:39:49 GMT

Message-ID:

<9SN6g.6866$Fg4.1244@clgrps12>

<timasmith@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1146855860.955064.17260@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

Hi,

I have an app (Java not that is too pertinent) which is a fat client
GUI with a main form, numerous dialogs, wizards, menu actions, toolbar
functionality etc.

I am looking for a consolidated method for reporting errors. I already
have code to log the exception, warning, error etc to a local circular
file.

But I also wish to display an error message to the end user to indicate
a problem occurred.

I can't stand a popup error message.

Rather I would like to do something similar to Internet Explorers
active x warning message, where a bar subtly rolls up with a warning
icon allowing you to click for further information.

While I do throw Exceptions up and up as far as I can - there are many
places, such as within a custom control where I trap the exception
early.

So to get the interaction with the main frame (or a dialog) should I
really pass JFrame or JDialog references throughout my code - or should
I use the good old global variables...ew...

The OO version of a global variable is a Singleton. You could have a
Singleton which acts as a model, for which one of the fields of that model
is the error message to report. Various controls would act as views of the
model, and display the red bar as appropriate.

- Oliver