What is a property editor?

A property editor allows you to customize a particular data type for a JavaBean component. Shown when selected from a property sheet of a builder tool, they implement the PropertyEditor interface and allow you to offer more than a text field for changing a property value. They can limit the input in the selection box to numbers (for instance), easily show a drop-down list of choices, or bring up a separate window from which to make a selection. The key thing to remember about property editors is that they don't let you find out about the value of other properties of the instance of the component.