Structure pane

The structure pane is located in the lower left of the AppBrowser. This pane displays a structural analysis of the file selected in the project pane.

This structural analysis is in the form of a hierarchical tree. You can think of the structure pane as a table of contents for the file.

You can also use the structure pane as a quick navigation tool to the various structural elements in the file. For example, if you have selected a .java file, you see classes, variables, and methods in the structure pane. You can then click on any of those elements in the structure pane and the content pane will move to and highlight that element in the source code.

This gives you a much faster way to browse and find the elements of a .java file than scrolling through it or searching for a word.

You can also search for a particular element by moving focus to the tree in the structure pane and beginning to type. For more information, see "Searching trees."

Right-click in the structure pane to see the structure pane pop-up menu. Change the structure order of the elements by selecting Properties from the pop-up menu.

Drilling down

You can also use the structure pane for drilling down into other ancestor classes and interfaces. To drill down, just double-click the class or interface you want to drill into. The AppBrowser displays the file in the project pane, content pane, and structure pane.

Component tree

When you select a .java file and then select the Design tab at the bottom of the content pane, the structure pane displays the designable objects in the file and how they are nested and interrelated. This view is called the component tree.

Getting help

When using the UI designer, you can select a component in the component tree of the structure pane and press F1 to view the Java documentation.

See also:
Building Applications with JBuilder: Using the component tree
Building Applications with JBuilder: Designing a user interface