It's all about Java

Unlike AWT, Java Swing tool kit provides feasibilty to create custom components and containers. To understand Java GUI toolkits more clearly, please read my other articles on Swing and AWT.  In this article I focus more on building custom components. Let us see how to create simple Rounded JButton. The below program demonstrates How rounded JButton can be created and added to a JFrame.   Program: import java.awt.Color; import java.awt.Dimension; import java.awt.Graphics; import java.awt.GridLayout; import java.awt.Shape; import java.awt.geom.Ellipse2D; import javax.swing.JButton; import javax.swing.JFrame; import javax.swing.JTextField; import javax.swing.SwingUtilities; import javax.swing.UIManager; import javax.swing.UnsupportedLookAndFeelException; public class RoundedJButton extends JButton { /** *  */ private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L; public RoundedJButton(String title) { super(title); Dimension size = getPreferredSize(); size.w...

This post helps in understanding usage of JFrame class with an example Swing toolkit categorizes components into 2 types. They are: Containers Controls Containers allows Controls to be arranged on them. JPanel, JFrame and JDialog are few which are frequently used. Controls are components like Buttons, labels, tables etc. These controls are arranged on containers using different layout managers. All Swing class names starts with J stands for J ava which symbolizes swing is pure java!   Layout Managers: Layout manager is responsible for laying out controls on containers according to the business requirement. Example layout managers are BorderLayout, GridLayout, GridBagLayout and FlowLayout. Few points about JFrame: JFrame is considered as a main window of the application.for almost all swing based applications All other controls and containers are created as child components of JFrame JFrama holds special components like  Menu bar, Tool bar etc...

Graphical user interface in short GUI makes computer users easy to understand and use the application software comfortably. Almost all modern programming languages allows application developers to develop GUIs. Java has AWT/Swing as default API as part of Java Foundation classes in short JFC which are shipped with JDK. Hence these toolkits can be used directly in our applications with out adding external libraries like jars to our application's class path. But there are some other toolkits which found useful and industry endorsed in developing GUI.      SWT       JFaces [Framework for SWT]      Java FX      Swing      AWT AWT: Abstract window toolkit is available since java first version. AWT uses native operating system resources like Fonts, colors and components like table, tree, dialogues, windows etc. Few notable points about AWT: AWT is heavy weight. It uses OS resources There are l...

1. Since Swing is not thread safe, it is not at all a good practice to launch a UI Container like JFrame, JDialog etc in main Thread. 2. Doing so leads to incorrect behavior of java GUI. 3. To avoid this, Swing toolkit has predefined API as part of JFC. 4.    a. SwingUtilities.invokeAndWait(Runnable r);        b. SwingUtilities.invokeLater(Runnable r); 5. Which part of the code must be in UI Thread?         a. setVisible(true);         b. show(); [deprecated]  and c. pack();       6. Call to these methods mentioned in 5(a), 5(b), and 5(c) must happen in one of the methods mentioned in point 4(a) and point 4(b). That's enough. :)          Example :                        public static void main(String[] args){                         ...

This post is intended to beginners of java swing toolkit programmers. It is a simple java program which demonstrates the swing based File explorer GUI. import java.awt.GridLayout; import java.io.File; import java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException; import java.util.Arrays; import java.util.List; import javax.swing.JFrame; import javax.swing.JPanel; import javax.swing.JScrollPane; import javax.swing.JTree; import javax.swing.SwingUtilities; import javax.swing.UIManager; import javax.swing.UnsupportedLookAndFeelException; import javax.swing.event.TreeModelListener; import javax.swing.tree.TreeModel; import javax.swing.tree.TreePath; /**  * @author NagasharathK  *  */ public class FileExplorer extends JFrame { private JTree fileManagerTree = null; public FileExplorer() { initComponents(); } /** * Initializes components */ private void initComponents() { this.getContentPane().add(new JScrollPane(createFileManagerTree(...

　 Swing toolkit provides a component called JColorChooser to choose colors. It allows users to select color from multiple color combinations. Some times our application may need simple component with an option to select only basic colors/ less number of color options unlike sepearate dialog with too may color options[JColorChooser]. This JColorComboBox may serve the need. I wanted my color chooser to behave like JComboBox. The popup shows all 12 colors and their names, among all of them one color can be choosen. see the below image. I created two classes          1. JColorComboBox          2. ColorRenderer JColorComboBox extends the JComboBox and ColorRenderer extends JLabel and implements ListCellRenderer. import java.awt.Color; import java.awt.Component; import java.awt.Font; import java.util.Enumeration; import java.util.Hashtable; import javax.swing.*; /** * * @author sharath */ public class JCol...

Swing toolkit comes with few standard Layout Managers where none of them serves the need of arranging components in a way that usually developers require. some of them does, but it takes lot of coding time to achieve it. GridBagLayout is the most flexible layout manager available in swing toolkit but their are so many variables that developer has to look after. DesignGridLayout can be a useful LayoutManager to arrange components in less time with very small snippet of code and can still get proper alignment. Layouting with DesignGridLayout is as easy as coding with various GUI Builder tools available in varoius IDEs. Simple program which demonstrates DesignGridLayout: import javax.swing.JButton; import javax.swing.JFrame; import javax.swing.JLabel; import javax.swing.JPanel; import javax.swing.JSeparator; import javax.swing.JTextField; import javax.swing.SwingUtilities; import javax.swing.UIManager; import javax.swing.UnsupportedLookAndFeelException; import net.java.dev.designgr...