Next time we'll look at changes to the code that will change the keyboard shortcuts, customize the layout of menus, and tweak the behavior of your application. In this article we'll look at some of the runtime properties you can set to move the position of the main menu bar, customize the Application menu, and tweak the appearance of the frame components. There are three phases to making your application feel more like a native Mac OS X application when running on a Mac without changing the look and feel on other platforms. After all, the end users don't care what language an application is written in any more than you care if this article is drafted in longhand, on a typewriter, or on a TiBook. In this series we'll look at what you can do to your Java application to make the experience more Mac-like. These end users don't care what language your application is written in, they just want a double-clickable application that is attractive and easy to use. Whether or not you develop on a Mac, take the time to make a small number of changes to your application so that you provide a Mac-like experience for the millions of potential customers who already use Mac OS X. The Mac is a great platform for Java developers with a wide array of commercial, free, and open source development tools available. Check a checkbox and you've enabled the built in Apache server.

Developers can pop open a Terminal window and find that their favorite geek tools like vi, emacs, and the Java command line tools are already installed. With a few simple tweaks you can give your Java application a native look and feel so that Mac OS X users can install and run your application without being aware that they are running a cross-platform application.ĭespite its pretty face, Mac OS X is built on top of BSD UNIX and comes complete with J2SE and Java Web Start installed. They have the Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) v1.3.1 pre-installed on their computers and may not even know it. There is a market full of millions of potential customers for your Java application that you may not be considering.

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