Extending the widget palette

The widget palette contains all the predefined eleven types of the widgets. You can also extend the widget palette with your own widgets. To extend the widget palette, you need to do the following steps:
  1. In the Eclipse, create a new Plug-in Project.
  2. In the Extensions tab of the MANIFEST.MF, click Add to add com.ibm.btt.rcp.xui.editor.widgets to the Extensions.
  3. Clear the Show only extension points from the required plug-ins check box, and enter the extension name in the Extension Point filter field as highlighted in the following screen capture:
    Screen capture showing the extension points
  4. Select com.ibm.btt.rcp.xui.editor.widgets, and click Finish. If New plug-in dependency dialog opens, click Yes. The following screen capture shows the New plug-in dependency dialog.
    Screen capture showing the New plug-in dependency dialog
  5. Right-click the extension name, and click New > widget as shown in the following screen capture.
    Screen capture showing how to add the new widget
  6. Specify the name, icon, and class for the new widget. The following screen capture shows Extension Element Details.
    Screen capture showing how to specify the widget details
  7. Run the plug-in project as Eclipse Application, and the newly created widget is displayed in the new palette. To get more information about how to extend the property, refer to Extending the widget and the property