User's Guide


The Applications Browser

The first step is to create an application component. An application is a Smalltalk component that holds functionally related classes in a single unit.

To create an application component (and observe a few things along the way), follow these steps:

  1. You need a browser that will let you create an application: an Applications Browser will do nicely. From the Transcript, select Browse Applications from the Tools menu. A standard browser opens that resembles the following:
    Standard browser
  2. The top left pane is the applications pane. This pane contains a list of the applications that are loaded into your image. Scroll down the list and select Kernel. The pane immediately to the right (the classes pane) now displays the classes that are in the application Kernel. Not many classes are listed, but the ellipses (...) after Kernel indicates that more classes are available.
  3. Double-click on Kernel. The application list expands, with several names indented under Kernel. The indented applications are subapplications of Kernel.

    Select CLDT, a subapplication of Kernel. In the classes pane, we see that classes also use ellipses to indicate that the list can be expanded. Double-click on the Collection class.

  4. The level of indentation in a classes pane indicates the level of subclassification. For example, at the top, notice that Object is not indented at all. The Collection class is indented one level, indicating that it is a subclass of Object. Just below Collection, notice the hierarchy of collection classes, all of which inherit from Collection.
  5. Now, select Bag, just below Collection. The bottom pane displays the definition for the class Bag. It has one instance variable: occurrenceDictionary.
  6. The third pane from the left (the categories pane) contains method categories. The push button below this pane controls whether you are looking at instance method categories or class method categories. Be sure the button is set to instance. (If the button displays class, select the button.)
  7. Select the category named CLDT-API. The far right pane (the methods pane) now contains methods that are categorized as CLDT-API in the class Bag.


[ Top of Page | Previous Page | Next Page | Table of Contents | Index ]