Is there a way for me to add buttons to the right side of my JLayeredPane? The layered pane contains a JPanel which represents a chess board and on top of this board I have JLabels representing chess pieces. I want basically another panel attached to the right side of the board which contains player information and buttons allowing for rematches/etc. What would be the best way to go about adding this panel?
Here is a snippet of my code. The part which sets up the board panel inside the layeredpane:
private void setupBoard() {
paneX = new JLayeredPane();
getContentPane().add(paneX);
paneX.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(500,500));
boardX = new JPanel();
paneX.add(boardX, JLayeredPane.DEFAULT_LAYER);
boardX.setLayout(new GridLayout(8,8));
boardX.setBounds(0,0,500,500);
chessBoard.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(500,500));
}
Then, I go on to add the jlabels to each component on the panel. I want to add another big panel attached to the right side of the board like I mentioned earlier.
Can't quite see why you would use a JLayeredPane for this, but that's just me.
Set the Layout for the main container to BorderLayout. Add the boardX to the BorderLayout.CENTER position of the main container.
Add the player information panel to the BorderLayout.EAST position of the main container.
Setting the bounds of the boardX is not really going to have any effect, as the parent container will want to use the panels preferred/minimum/maximum size (based on whatever layout manager you might use) to determine the best size to make it, which based on your code, would probably be 500x500 anyway...
Related
I am opening a window with the following:
JFrame clientFrame = new JFrame("Frame");
clientFrame.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
final JPanel client_panel = new JPanel();
client_panel.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
client_panel.add(new Applet());
client_panel.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(765, 555));
clientFrame.getContentPane().add(client_panel, "Center");
clientFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
clientFrame.pack();
clientFrame.setVisible(true);
the frame has a random picture on it.
By default when you drag the bottom border upwards, it will naturally remove from the image from the bottom of the image.
The same if you drag the top border downwards it will again remove incrementally from the bottom of the picture.
How do I swap it around so instead it removes form the top of the picture instead of from the bottom?
clientFrame.getContentPane().add(client_panel, "Center");
Don't use magic values. People don't know where "Center" comes form. Use variables provided by the API:
clientFrame.getContentPane().add(client_panel, BorderLayout.CENTER);
What you are asking is not possible with any layout manager that I am aware of. The problem is that the layout manager only knows about size available to the component. It does not know why the size changed (ie, drag up or down). So the layout manager can only define rules based on the space available.
As a simple test use a JPanel with a BorderLayout. Then create a JLabel with containing an ImageIcon. Add the label to this panel and then add the panel to the content pane of the frame.
If you add the label to the BorderLayout.CENTER, then the image is centered in the space available so you lose part of the top and bottom.
If you add the label to the BorderLayout.PAGE_START then space is always taken from (or given to) the bottom of the component.
If you add the label to the BorderLayout.PAGE_END then space is always taken from (or given to) the top of the component.
If you want to consider the drag up or down of the frame then the solution gets much more complicated because you will need to add a ComponentListener to the frame and handle the componentResized and componentMoved methods. You will then need to track the previous state of the frame and then determine which properties have changed and then you will need to do custom painting of the image based on the property changes or you will need to write a custom layout manager that is aware of the property changes.
I have two transparent overlapping JPanel both inside of a container panel, using CardLayout.
I have components inside both panels, but even if they are both transparent, it is showing only the components inside the panel added for first inside the container:
panel1.setOpaque(false);
panel2.setOpaque(false);
container.setLayout(new CardLayout(0, 0));
container.add(panel1); //only components inside panel1 are shown
container.add(panel2); //if I change order, only components in panel2 are shown
Since I have buttons in panel1 and labels in panel2 (I need them to be like this), I would like to make both panels' components visible.
You can use the OverlayLayout.
This layout is designed to display two components on top on one another.
The Swing tutorial doesn't have an example of this layout so you can check out: Java Layout with Component always in Top Right for an example to help demonstrate how the layout works.
So I was trying to google how to set a default size to JButtons so that they don't grow as the JFrame is resized. I didn't see a setDefaultSize method but the closest one I could find that does a similar job is setMaximumSize(). However, it doesn't seem to work in my situation and I'm guessing it's because I'm using Grid Layout for positioning my buttons in the frame, here's a small piece of my code:
rightPanel.add(ButtonA);
rightPanel.add(ButtonB);
rightPanel.add(ButtonC);
outerPanel.add(leftPanel);
outerPanel.add(rightPanel);
getContentPane().add(outerPanel);
Here's a picture of what happens:
I would also like to have my buttons in the middle of the right panel when I'm resizing (just like they are now but a lot smaller). Any idea of how I can fix this? I'm assuming that I have to use another layout or something.
Thanks
EDIT: I modified my code to use BoxLayout but it does not seem to put the buttons in the middle. The X Alignment is working but Y Alignment is not doing anything:
ButtonA.setAlignmentX(CENTER_ALIGNMENT);
ButtonA.setAlignmentY(CENTER_ALIGNMENT);
ButtonB.setAlignmentX(CENTER_ALIGNMENT);
ButtonB.setAlignmentY(CENTER_ALIGNMENT);
ButtonC.setAlignmentX(CENTER_ALIGNMENT);
ButtonC.setAlignmentY(CENTER_ALIGNMENT);
JPanel rightPanel = new JPanel();
rightPanel.setLayout(new BoxLayout(rightPanel, BoxLayout.Y_AXIS));
rightPanel.add(ButtonA);
rightPanel.add(ButtonB);
rightPanel.add(ButtonC);
outerPanel.add(leftPanel);
outerPanel.add(rightPanel);
getContentPane().add(outerPanel);
EDIT2: Fixed with vertical glue.
A GridLayout will always resize the components to fill the space available.
Try using a vertical BoxLayoutinstead. See the section from the Swing tutorial on How to Use Box Layout for more information and examples.
Encapsulate each JButton in a JPanel with a FlowLayout, and then add those FlowLayout JPanels to the rightPanel instead of the JButtons themselves. This will allow you to keep your evenly spaced buttons, but won't make them expand to take up the entire space that the parent container has available.
If you don't want them evenly spaced, but to be three consecutive buttons one after another top down, you can make the right panel have a BorderLayout, add a sub panel to the north area of the BorderLayout with the original GridLayout that the right panel had, and then add those FlowLayout panels containing the JButtons.
I'm creating a Java swing app and I'm having a real hard time getting elements positioned nicely.
How would I go about making the input boxes and combo boxes to say 30px high? Also, how would I go about making the right edge of all the text line up vertically and the left edge of all the input boxes line up vertically?
I have a main JPanel which is BoxLayout.Y_AXIS, and then I have 6 JPanels on the main JPanel. These 6 JPanels are set to BorderLayout and as you can see I have used WEST for the JLabels and EAST for the input fields.
Here's a snippet of how I'm creating the 1st panel which is on top of the main panel.
private JPanel getProtocolPanel() {
protocolNumber.setBorder(BorderFactory.createLineBorder(Color.GREEN));
protocolNumberInput.setBorder(BorderFactory.createLineBorder(Color.CYAN));
protocolNumber.setVerticalAlignment(SwingConstants.TOP);
protocolPanel = new JPanel();
protocolPanel.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
protocolPanel.setBorder(BorderFactory.createLineBorder(Color.RED));
protocolPanel.add(protocolNumber, BorderLayout.WEST);
protocolPanel.add(protocolNumberInput, BorderLayout.EAST);
return protocolPanel;
}
Let me know if there is a better way to do this type of layout.
Thanks.
You are either going to have to nest layouts inside each other, or use a more complex layout (Spring, GridBag, Mig), or both to get the desired effect.
My current problem is that I have a JFrame with a 2x2 GridLayout. And inside one of the squares, I have a JPanel that is to display a grid. I am having a field day with the java swing library... take a look
Image
Java is automatically expanding each JLabel to fit the screen. I want it to just be those blue squares (water) and the black border and not that gray space. Is there a way I can just set the size of that JPanel permanently so that I don't have to go through changing the size of the JFrame a million times before I get the exact dimension so that the gray space disappears?
I also would like to set the size of those buttons so they are not so huge (BorderLayout is being used for the buttons and TextField)
GridBagLayout is what you really want to use. The GridLayout will force the same size for each component in the layout no matter what size constraints you put on them. GridBagLayout is a lot more powerful and a lot more complicated. Study up on the API page for it. Using GridBagLayout, the components won't fill the whole grid space if you don't want them to and can even stay the size that you ask it to be. To keep a component's size from changing, I would set all three available size constraints:
water.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(20, 20));
water.setMinimumSize(new Dimension(20, 20));
water.setMaximumSize(new Dimension(20, 20));
For your buttons, I would definitely use an inner panel as Bryan mentions. You could use either a GridLayout like he suggests or a FlowLayout if you don't want all the buttons to be the same size. Add all your buttons to that inner panel instead of the main one.
If you want the two checkerboards to stay the same size, then you'll need to have them each contained in their own JPanel. Set each of those parent JPanel's to have a layout type of GridBagLayout. Set the preferedSize for each checkerboard component and then add them to their respective containers. GridBagLayout should by default lay each board out in the center of the parent JPanel. So as the window is resized, the JPanel parent area will get larger or smaller, but the checkerboard components inside will remain the same size.
Alternatively, you could have your blue squares scale to the right size as the window is resized by having each checkboard square be a JPanel with a BorderLayout layout manager and adding the JLabel (with a blue background color) to its BorderLayout.CENTER location.
As for your buttons, try something like this:
JPanel theButtonPanel = new JPanel(new BorderLayout());
JButton button1 = new JButton("Fire");
JButton button2 = new JButton("Pass");
JButton button3 = new JButton("Forfiet");
JPanel innerButtonContainer = new JPanel(new Grid(1, 3, 8, 8));
innerButtonContainer.add(button1);
innerButtonContainer.add(button2);
innerButtonContainer.add(button3);
theButtonPanel.add(innterButtonContainer);
Lastly, consider using a design tool for your Swing user interface. Netbeans has an excellent UI designer built into it. Download Netbeans here.
If you can setResizeable( false ) on the top level frame you can then set your layout manager to null and hard code each location and size via setBounds. This is how I would do it (contingent on resizing of course).
I have had success solving problems like these using TableLayout which is a third party layout manager. You will need to download it and read the tutorial but the key would be to set the justification to CENTER when adding the JButtons to their positions in the layout.