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<!-- Package summary here -->

<p>Provides interfaces and classes in the the MillStone UI component library.</p>

<h2>Package Specification</h2>

<p><strong>Interface hierarchy</strong></p>

<p>The general interface hierarchy looks like this:</p>

<p style="text-align: center;><img src="doc-files/component_interfaces.gif"/> </p>

<p><i>Note that the above picture includes only the main interfaces. This
package includes several other lesser subinterfaces which are not
significant in this scope. The interfaces not appearing here are documented
with the classes that define them.</i></p>

<p>The {@link com.itmill.toolkit.ui.Component} interface is the top-level
interface which must be implemented by all UI components. It defines the
common properties of the components and how the framework will handle
them. Most simple components (like {@link com.itmill.toolkit.ui.Button} for
example} won't need to implement the lower level interfaces described
below. Note that the classes and interfaces required by the component event
framework are defined in {@link com.itmill.toolkit.ui.Component}.</p>

<p>The next level in the component hierarchy are the classes implementing
the {@link com.itmill.toolkit.ui.ComponentContainer} interface. It adds the
capacity to contain other components to
{@link com.itmill.toolkit.ui.Component} with a simple API.</p>

<p>The third and last level is the {@link com.itmill.toolkit.ui.Layout},
which adds the concept of location to the components contained in a
{@link com.itmill.toolkit.ui.ComponentContainer}. It can be used to create
containers whose contents can be positioned arbitrarily.</p>

<p><strong>Component class hierarchy</strong></p>

<p>The actual component classes form a hierarchy like this:</p>

<center><img src="doc-files/component_class_hierarchy.gif"/></center><br/>

<center><i>Underlined classes are abstract.</i></center>

<p>At the top level is {@link com.itmill.toolkit.ui.AbstractComponent}
which implements the {@link com.itmill.toolkit.ui.Component} interface. As
the name suggests it is abstract, but it does include a default
implementation for all methods defined in <code>Component</code> so that
a component is free to override only those functionalities it needs.</p>

<p>As seen in the picture, <code>AbstractComponent</code> serves as the
superclass for several "real" components, but it also has a some abstract
extensions. {@link com.itmill.toolkit.ui.AbstractComponentContainer} serves
as the root class for all components (for example, panels and windows) who
can contain other components. {@link com.itmill.toolkit.ui.AbstractField},
on the other hand, implements several interfaces to provide a base class for
components that are used for data display and manipulation.</p>


<!-- Package spec here -->

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