I am just thinking about ways to improve the user experience for our data entry application and thought about a Mac OS X Spotlight like search bar which allow the user to search for arbitrary terms and pick from a list of choices that match the terms.
I imagine something that is capable of showing categories (like contacts, appointments, mails etc.) and the related results simultaneously.
Do you know of any Swing component that is readily available somewhere, so I would not need to create the UI part again, but concentrate on the actual ‘search plugins’?
Offhand, I cannot think of a ‘ready made’ component for what you are looking at but you may find the following interesting:
macwidgets
This is a collection of ‘mac style’ widgets, such as a ‘heads up display’ and sidebar lists similar to the ones you find in iTunes.
You may want to try adapting some of them to what you need.