Watch Those Icons Closely

Yesterday
in Geertjan's
blog he covered some of the finer points of "branding"
an application that is built on the
NetBeans Platform. This is the process of replacing all the standard
NetBeans icons and names, etc. with your own stuff.

It was a timely entry for me, since I'm currently trying to learn enough
to create a small sample application for the

BOF I'll be doing at
JavaOne.
But I got confused when he showed the .gif files. The name of the folder
that contains those .gif files is branding/core/core.jar/org/netbeans/core/startup.
When I looked at the screen snapshot he used, I focused in on "core.jar" and my
brain immediately thought: "He's showing us an expanded .jar file but telling
us to just drop our .gif files into a folder. What's up with that? Does
he really mean that I need to add my .gif files to that .jar file?"

So I sent him an email and he responded with a blog
entry today that made me
realize my mistake. Notice the icon next to core.jar. It's a folder. That's
because core.jar is the name of a folder, not the name of a .jar file.
Doh! If it were a .jar file the
NetBeans IDE would display it with the icon for a .jar
file! I just got careless when looking at it....

In the end, no harm done and Geertjan got to write another in his (hopefully) endless
series of helpful blogs for folks developing on the NetBeans Platform. If by
chance you would like to ask Geertjan questions of your own, he'll be on the road
during May. His first stop is in South Africa on May 5 for
NetBeans Day South Africa.

Geertjan will also be in the house on May 15
at NetBeans Day
San Francisco.
The first four hundred people through the door in San Francisco will get a free copy of
the
NetBeans IDE Field Guide, 2nd Edition and a free USB drive. Seats are limited, so
register now. The event
is free and you do not have to be registered for JavaOne in order to attend.