Demo

From ZKDesktop

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Download 3 Installation 4 General Usage 5 Things to Try 6 Stopping the Demo 7 Uninstallation

Introduction

Want to try the Zero Kelvin Desktop yourself? Don't want to install the entire SDK? Download the demo!

Download

To run the demo, you will need the following:

• A current Java SDK - The language all this is written in. Be sure to get the "JDK" and not the "JRE".
• ZipAndRunDemo-yyyyMMdd.zip - The "Zip and Run" demo archive ("yyyyMMdd" is the date the demo was released).

Installation

• We'll assume Java was installed when you downloaded it. If not, install it now.
• Unpack ZipAndRunDemo-yyyyMMdd.zip anywhere you'd like.
• Read the included README.txt.
• Go back to the last step where you skipped reading the README.txt and actually read it.
• Run either "windows.cmd" or "unixish.sh" to start the demo server.

General Usage

• To view the demo, point your web browser at: http://localhost:8080/zkdsamplesite
• If everything was installed correctly and Tomcat started, you will be presented with the ZK Desktop after a few seconds.
• The demo assumes your name is "Demo" and that you have full rights to access everything on the desktop.
• Feel free to play around with the windows. Drag them around. Close some applications. Open more applications. Have fun!

Things to Try

• The main menu used to launch applications can be resized and moved around the screen. Additional programs are located in the Samples group inside the menu.

• The Console application lets you look at the log entries generated by various parts of the system. More entertaining is the "SQL" tab that lets you poke around inside the embedded SQL server.
  • Click the SQL tab.
  • Type "SELECT * FROM Persistence" in the box at the bottom of window.
  • Click "Execute". All the data currently stored by the Pluggable Persistence Module will be displayed.

• In the Samples folder are several other applications to try. Most are of more interest as programming examples, but there are a couple to play with as a user:
  • Run the IPC Test application. This is a test utility for debugging interprocess communications.
    • Start a second copy of the IPC Test application.
      • Drag this second copy around so you can see both of them at the same time.
    • In the first IPC Test window, type "Chat1" into the "Subscribe to Channel" box and click "Join".
    • In the second window, type "Chat1" in the "Publish to Channel" box.
    • Type "Hi there!" into the "Message" box in the second window.
    • Click "Send" in the second window. After a second, the message will show up in the first window.
      • While this isn't overly exciting, it demonstrates transmitting data from one application to another. Applications running on the ZK Desktop are isolated from each other. IPC is a powerful feature that allows you to share complex data easily!
    • Close the second IPC window.
    • In the first window, type "Jaeger.ZKDMainMenu.Visible" into the "Publish to Channel" box.
    • In the "Message" box, type "false".
    • Click "Send".
      • ACK! Where'd the main menu go?!
    • In the "Message" box, type "true".
    • Click "Send".
      • Whew! IPC can be used to send commands or requests to other applications. Notice that we didn't have to be subscribed to the same channel that we sent messages to. This makes the IPC system even easier to use!
  • Run the Web Browser application.
    • Type an address into the "Location" box and click the "Go!" button.
      • The browser demonstrates the ability to embed classic web applications into a ZK Desktop based environment.
      • It's not a very good browser. Navigating to a page with "frame busting" code will log you off the ZK Desktop.
  • After playing with the desktop a bit, go back to the Console application.
    • Look at the log to see what you've been doing. Additional logs can be easily added by other applications.

Stopping the Demo

• When you are finished with the demo, simply close your browser. This will log you off the desktop.
• Switch back to the window where you started the demo server from and press a key.

Uninstallation

• To remove the demo, simply delete the folder where you unpacked it.