Newbie - where do I start?

Spark Spark Dev
1

Hi, I’'m a developer who wants to try writing some baic plugins for Spark.

For starters I would like to create a simple button on the Spark menu which, when clicked, says “hello world”. (not an IM message, just an alert box!). Sounds easy, yeah? The trouble is, I know nothing about Java, I don’'t know the process of writing a Spark plugin, where the source code is, or even should I be trying to look at the source code at all?

I am new to Java but experienced in VB, VB.Net, Javascript among other things. In other words, I am new to this, but I am a programmer so I’‘m not afraid of learning. I’‘m a Windows XP Pro user. I have downloaded JDK with NetBeans. It seems a bit like Visual Studio (which I’'m used to) and I reckon I could handle it after a bit of practice. Can I use JDK/NetBeans to write my Spark plugins?

This probably sounds very dumb to you experts. Sorry about that. I just need pointing in the right direction pelase.

Where do I start?

Thanks,

Owen

Message was edited by: oweny29

2

Hi Owen,

Since you’‘re interested in Sparkplug development I would suggest you start off by downloading the sparkplug kit and reading through the documentation and looking at the included code samples. Please note that the documentation assumes that you are familiar with Java (and ant), so you’'d probably do well by working through some basic Java tutorials and maybe picking up a copy of Thinking in Java.

Hope that helps,

Ryan

PS - An IDE like Netbeans can certainly be used to develop sparkplugs but it isn’'t required.

3

Owen,

Once you have taken Ryan’'s advice. You may also wish to check out a question i had on the popup messages as well. It has some example code for using the messages.

“[Using Spark’'s Toaster Pop-up to Show Custom Message|http://www.igniterealtime.org/forum/thread.jspa?messageID=137108&#137108]”

Brad.