Drag and Drop Bean Suite Version 2.0

The Drag and Drop bean suite provides the functionality to use the simple cases of  the Drag and Drop behavior both inside of Frame and between Frames of a Java application.

The suite currently consists of two beans, which work in co-operation:

• DragBean helps you to make the data (Drag Source data) of a GUI element draggable from it

• DropBean helps you to make the data (Drag Target data) of a GUI element able to accept transferring data.

Only java.lang.Object and objects inherited from this class can be used as the Drag Source data and Drag Target data. Primitive type data (i.e. int, long, and so on) can not be used as the Drag Source data or Drag Target data. For the primitive type data, you may use the VariableHolder bean from the WiringHelpers package (it can be obtained from the alphaBeans site (www.alphaworks.ibm.com).

See the documentation provided with this package for system requirements and installation instructions.

What's New in This Release

1. This version of the Drag and Drop bean suite supports the realization the Drag and Drop mechanism with Java Development Kit Versions 1.2.
2. You can set an image for drag and drop cursor icons and a cursor for the drag cursor.

Late Breaking News

Known Problems

1. The component, which does not have an influence on the mouse event sequence during drag-and-drop can not be used as Drag Source (a component, which contains a property to be transferred). Such components as java.awt.Button, java.awt.Checkbox, java.awt.List, and java.awt.Scrollbar can not be Drag Source, because of the peculiarity of their internal mechanism, which processes the mouse event.
2. In VisualAge 1.01, you can not select a text from TextField, which is used as Drag Source.
3. The DragEvent and DropEvent events have the getPoint() method, which has to return a point where the event occurs. However, it returns the correct  point   value only when the dragStart() method is invoked on DragEvent or the dragOver() method on DropEvent.
4. The dragDropEndOk and dragDropEndFailed events can hang the whole Java Application in JDK 1.2 environment, especially when they are wired in order to set some data to AWT controls. They are expected to be safe when wired to methods that do not change any AWT control, for example, do not set a text to java.awt.TextField.
5. You can not set an image for the drag and drop cursor icons in the JDK 1.2 environment, because it is a JDK 1.2 problem. For more detailed information refer to http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/bugParade/index.html, Bug ID : 94721