Developing a Slideshow Applet

Developing a Slideshow Applet

Step 1: Create new class and name it SlideShowApplet. Open that class, erase everything it might contains, and replace it with the following framework for a basic applet:
import java.awt.event.*;

import javax.swing.*;

public class SlideShowApplet extends JApplet implements ActionListener

{
public void init()

{

}

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)

{

}

}

Step 2: Add the proper fields to the applet. You need “back” and “next” buttons, a place to show the current image, an array to hold the names of the image files to display, and a counter that points to the current image file:
import java.awt.event.*;

import javax.swing.*;

public class SlideShowApplet extends JApplet implements ActionListener

{

JLabel display = new JLabel();

JButton back = new JButton("Back");

JButton stop = new JButton("Stop");

JButton next = new JButton("Next");

int currentImage = -1;

String images[] = {"image0.jpg", "image1.jpg", "image2.jpg"};

public void init()

{

}

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)

{

}

}
Step 3: Layout of everything, activating the buttons, adding some methods to load the next or previous picture, and changing the actionPerformed method accordingly. The new methods don’t do anything yet, but we can focus on them in the next step without changing the rest of the code. Note the two additional import statements we need for the layout managers.
import java.awt.BorderLayout;

import java.awt.FlowLayout;

// other import statements as before
public class SlideShowApplet extends JApplet implements ActionListener

{

// fields as before

public void init()

{

JPanel buttons = new JPanel(new FlowLayout());

buttons.add(back);

buttons.add(stop);

buttons.add(next);

getContentPane().setLayout(new BorderLayout());

getContentPane().add("Center", display);

getContentPane().add("South", buttons);

back.addActionListener(this);

stop.addActionListener(this);

next.addActionListener(this);

}
public void showCurrentImage()

{

}

public void showNextImage()

{

}

public void showPreviousImage()

{

}

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)

{

if (e.getSource() == next)

showNextImage();

else if (e.getSource() == back)

showPreviousImage();

}

}

Step 4: Focusing on showing the actual images. The only code that will change is the various “show Image” methods, so we only list those methods:
public void showCurrentImage()

{

display.setIcon(new ImageIcon(images[currentImage]));

}

public void showNextImage()

{

currentImage = currentImage + 1;

if (currentImage >= images.length)

currentImage = 0;

showCurrentImage();

}

public void showPreviousImage()

{

currentImage = currentImage - 1;

if (currentImage < 0)

currentImage = images.length-1;

showCurrentImage();

}
Step 5: Fixing our mistakes. At this step things should work reasonably well, but you must have, of course, image files named image0.jpg, image1.jpg, and image2.jpg in the same directory as your applet before you can test it. Once you do test it you should find everything working okay but (a) there is no image initially, and (b) the image can not be scrolled appropriately. To fix it, we replace

getContentPane().add("Center", display);
in the public void init method with
getContentPane().add("Center", new JScrollPane(display));
Also, we add a call to showNextImage() as the last line of public void init to finish our applet. It should work seemingly without problems at this point.
Step 6: To transfer our applet to a web page for final testing, we need to do the following:

• 
  Transfer the file SlideShowApplet.class to our web server
  
• 
  Transfer the image files image0.jpg, image1.jpg, and image2.jpg to the same directory on our web server
  
• 
  Create an HTML document or use an existing one and add the proper applet tag as follows:
  

We are now ready for our final test by opening our web page with a web browser, but when we do we find that the program no longer works. To fix it, we need to modify the showCurrentImage as follows:
public void showCurrentImage()

{

try

{

URL image = new URL(getDocumentBase(), images[currentImage]);

display.setIcon(new ImageIcon(image));

}

catch(Exception ex)

{

JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(this, "Error image " + currentImage);

}

}
Before it compiles, however, we need to add another import statement:

import java.net.URL;
That will do the trick and finish our final applet.
Step 7: To make our slideshow self-running, we contract out for a “timer” class that can automatically generate ActionEvents at specified intervals.