Form Editor: Overview

Introduction

The Form Editor is a key feature of EchoStudio. This simple editor gives you easy access to all of the important information about the form being developed. Most commonly, a form will correspond to a screen in your application, but EchoStudio Form Components are very flexible and can be used in other capacities as well. Mastering the Form Editor will ensure that you get the most value from EchoStudio and enable you to rapidly design complex interactions.

Purpose

The Form Editor provides you with a graphical user interface (GUI) to design and preview forms. It generates the Java code necessary to create the form in the layout you specify, including skeletons of the callback functions you define to handle events. It also provides an easy mechanism to configure integrate the internationalization resources you may be using.

Launching

There are three ways to access the Form Editor. To create a new form and view it in the Form Editor, click the New Form Component button in the Project Overview (Figure 1). To open an existing form component with the Form Editor, you can either double-click the form's name in the Project Overview (Figure 2) or you can open the corresponding .java file normally in the Package Explorer.

Contexts

The Form Editor is divided into three distinct contexts from which to review the form being developed:

Design Context

The primary means by which you will develop form components.

Source Context

Used to provide additional initialization behavior and define the behavior for event notifications.

Configuration Context

Defines the resources used for internationalization.

These contexts are accessible from the tabs provided (Figure 3).