With the Options Dialog API and SPI, you can easily create option panels with which the user can comfortably manage the settings and options of your application. This module provides the basic structure of an option dialog into which you can integrate your panels, as shown in Figure 20-1. There are two or three possible variants of panels. There are primary and secondary panels. A secondary panel is a subcategory of a primary panel in form of a tab. There are two kinds of primary panels: primary panels that manage options themselves, and primary panels that only function as containers and contain secondary panels. Preferably the settings are saved and loaded using the Preferences API. The NetBeans Platform provides a specific implementation which will be explained in more detail in the “Managing Settings” section.
