Developing E-Slate aware Components

Among E-Slate's main objectives is to enable the construction of Microworlds from non-programmers. To achieve this, E-Slate components carry extra functionality that guides and aids the the process of syntehsizing Microworlds. This functionality is provided as an extension to the Java Bean framework by a well established API underlying all E-Slate components. 

However this functionality is not a prerequisite for a component in order to be embedable in an E-Slate Microworld. A third party Java application or applet which is a Bean, will be fully usable in E-Slate (lively linked, persistent, customizable) by Java expert authors, but it won't be very useful to non-programmers. 

 To achieve the latter, the applets/beans should  use the E-Slate platform API. This API has been designed so that the changes needed to incorporate the E-Slate features into a third party applet/application are minimal and, most importantly, do not interfere with the logic of the applet/application. That is, the add-on code is small and "isolated" from the rest of the code. In this way the third party applet/application does not have to become "bound" to the E-Slate API. 

The following two documents provide in-depth information and step-by-step examples of how to develop E-Slate components from ground up, or embed E-Slate logic into existing Java beans.

 
The E-Slate Programming Tutorial, describes the process of converting an Java bean into an E-Slate component, using a concrete example.
The E-Slate Programmer's Guide describes the process of writing components for the E-Slate platform.

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