Summary

Drawing something using the polygons and other shapes available with Java might seem like more trouble than it's worth, especially when you can load image files such as .GIF files and .JPG files, as you'll see in the next hour. However, graphics depicted with polygons have two advantages over graphics that are loaded from image files:

• Speed—Even a small graphic, such as an icon, would take longer to load and display than a series of polygons.

• Scaling—You can change the size of an entire image that uses polygons simply by changing the values to create it. For example, you could add a function to the Sign class that multiplies all (x,y) points in each shape by two before they are created, and it would result in an image twice as large. Polygon images scale much more quickly than image files and produce better results.

There are many instances where it makes more sense to use graphics files in your programs, and you will be trying some of them in the next hour.