Hi all!

I new to Java, and OOP in general; however, I do have a little background in Bash, Perl, and Python. I would like some help designing a program in Java (and if Java isn't the best-suited way to go about this, I'd like opinions on what would be).

Here's my problem:

--- I have a linux box at home I have configured to be a "file-server" of sorts: it exports a directory (/share) to all of the machines on my LAN (192.168.0.0/255.255.255.255); /share contains my 20+ GB music library, all my PDF's, and several seasons of different shows. I am using NFS to do this, and I have all the other machines set up so that my share (192.168.0.11:/share) is mounted at boot time to a "Public" directory on every linux computer in the house. This is all well and good, but the fact is I'm the only person in my family who knows anything about the Bash shell (and linux in particular ), so it's hard for everyone else to find what they want in this "Public" folder because (especially with the Music directory) everything is so "nested" it's hard to traverse. Also, the file managers I'm using (Dolphin and Nautilus), are OK but I don't really like how their "search" features are set up.

Here's what I want to do:

--- I want to create a GUI application (Java or otherwise) that users can click on from their desktop. This application, when launched, will show all of the contents of the "Public" folder (and that folder ONLY). I would like it to have some sort of regex searching that *visually* displays/eliminates matching files/folders *as you type!*. I would also like the program to be able to play media files (mp3, mp4, avi, wav, etc.) without calling external programs, but that may be more than I can handle right now . However, if I can't do that, it does need to be able to launch the desktop's (Gnome/KDE) default program for playing media.

Some things to consider:

--- All of the "Public" folders' permissions should be untouched during and after the running of the program

--- I'd *like* to write this in Java, as I'm taking a CS course that uses it

--- I'd *love* to be able to perform regex searches with visual *feedback*

I'm not, of course, asking anyone to write this for me! I'd just like some help figuring out how to design a *semi* large-scale application like this, as I've never done anything this big w/ Java and GUI.

Any help here, folks?

Josh Murray