Extending the widget palette

The widget palette contains all the predefined eleven types of the widgets. You can also extend the widget palette with your own widgets. Perform the following steps to get the overall understanding of this function:
  1. In the Eclipse, create a new Plug-in Project.
  2. In the Extensions tab of the MANIFEST.MF, click Add to add com.ibm.btt.rcp.xui.editor.widgets to the Extensions.
  3. Deselect the Show only extension points from the required plug-ins check box, and input the extension name in the Extension Point filter field as highlighted in the following figure.
    Screen capture shows the added extension
  4. Select com.ibm.btt.rcp.xui.editor.widgets, and click Finish. If there is dependencies prompt popping out as shown in the following figure, click Yes.
    Screen capture shows the New plug-in dependency prompt
  5. Right click the extension name, and click New > widget as shown in the following figure.
    Screen capture shows how to add the new widget
  6. Specify the name, icon, and class for the new widget. See the following figure for example.
    Screen capture shows an example about specifying the widget details
  7. Run the plug-in project as Eclipse Application, and the newly created widget is displayed in the new palette. A simple sample of creating the widget is provided in the Reference section.