Providing Navigator View howto

Following document describes steps needed for module writers to plug in their view into Navigator window for certain document (data) type.

Implementing NavigatorPanel interface is easy, you can copy from template basic implementation BasicNavPanelImpl.java.

Only interesting parts are following:

Constructor: Make sure that your implementation class has public no-arg constructor, which is needed for system to instantiate your provider.
getComponent method: Simply create and return your UI representation of your data in Swing's JComponent envelope. Just be sure that you don't create new JComponent subclass per every call, as performance will suffer then.
panelActivated and panelDeactivated methods: Data context methods - in panelActivated, grab your data from given Node somehow, for example through its asociated DataObject/FileObject or Lookup. Attach listeners to asociated data and trigger UI update with new data. Do *not* perform any long computation here, see below.
In panelDeactivated, be sure to remove all listeners to data given to you in panelActivated.
Long computation of content: What if rendering your Navigator view takes long time, more than several milliseconds? Right approach is to create and run new task using RequestProcessor each time when panelActivated call arrived or your listeners on data context got called. While computing, UI of Navigator view should show some please wait message.

Declarative registration of your NavigatorPanel impl is easy again, you can copy from template layer basicNavLayer.xml

Additional interesting info:

System looks up for navigator providers only in navigator/panels folder, nowhere else.
Multiple mime types can be specified for one provider, separated by a comma char.
System will print a warning to the error output if some attribute is missing or NavigatorPanel implementation class can't be found or instantiated.