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What GUI component should I use?

I am working on my homework assignment and I have to achieve the following layout. Can anyone guide me as to how to achieve the right side of the view? I have already coded the left part, it's just the right side that I don't know what to use?
Calendar GUI
Should I just use paintComponent or a JTable?

JTable doesn't seems to suit your needs. You can consider using an array of JTextArea which will be added into a JScrollPane.
In this case, you can make use of the existing behaviours from these JComponents, such as setting them as editable/non-editable. Auto scrolling for JTextArea. JTextArea also allows displaying of multiple lines of records.
Should I just use paintComponent
I supposed you meant by custom painting. Using custom painting will give you alot of freedom to do your own customizations, however if the current JComponents are able to fulfill you needs, then I think you shouldn't try to reinvent the wheel, especially when you need to deal with printing text. Aligning the text properly in custom painting could cost you alot more time than learning how to use various existing JComponents.

How to auto resize java swing elements?

I'm trying to auto resize the left side of my application. I have a JTextField and a JTree on the left and 3 JButtons on the right. But I just don't know how to make the left side auto resizeable.
I did it with the Netbeans GUI Creator (or whatever it is called) but I don't know how to to it without Netbeans. (I usually don't program with Netbeans, this was just an exception to see if it's even possible to do so with Swing.
Here is the code Netbeans created: http://pastebin.com/ERwY4rBC
It's not that the code is completely unusable but I wanted to try it manually.
The GroupLayout looks nice, but the Oracle site says it's mainly for the use for GUI tools. So, using GroupLayout would be not "Java like" or how do I have to understand it? Or is there even a better way to achieve this without GroupLayout?
Thanks!

So, using GroupLayout would be not "Java like" or how do I have to understand it
GroupLayout is to put it simply really hard to hand-code, and results mostly in a lot of code. But it is not "not Java like", it is just not something you want to do by hand, and the code afterwards is hard to read as it is rather verbose.
What you try to achieve (according to the screenshot) is easily achievable using some 'nested layouts'. If your main panel uses a BorderLayout where you put the left, resizable panel in the BorderLayout.CENTER and the other, non-resizable panel in the BorderLayout.EAST you will obtain the desired resize behavior.
Then you just have to decide which LayoutManager to use for those individual panels. I think that both the BoxLayout as well as the FlowLayout will do just fine.

Do yourself a favour and use MigLayout for all your layout needs. It is especially convenient for coding UI by hand.
There is a WebStart application on their site that demos different layout situations with code samples provided.

How to resize controls at runtime in java

Is there a way to resize a control, a JTextfield for example, at runtime in java? I want my textfield to have the resize cursors (just like when you point your cursor on the corner of a window) and will be able to resize on runtime. Ive read on the internet that vb6 and C# have those capabilities, is there anything for java? A sample code or a link to a good tutorial will be very much appreciated. Thank you.

It sounds like you are trying to implement a component editor, such as the GUI editors available in popular programing IDEs. The essential feature is a handle, a graphical object that can be selected and dragged to change the geometry. GraphPanel is a simple example of an object drawing program that illustrates many of the required techniques.

That depends on the Layout of the JTextField's container. A good tutorial is available at http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/visual.html

For a quick and cheap solution you could use a JSplitPane component, with the JTextField to be resized in the left side, and an empty JPanel in the right side. By default a JSplitPane is decorated with a border and a divider, but you can remove these by setting an empty border.

jButton resizing upon changing text label

I'm reasonably new to java GUIs and have been using netbeans to help me out.
I've set up a jButton such that when clicked its label changes. My issue is that the size of the button refuses to remain fixed despite setting a maximum and minimum size as well as the setting the preferredSize method. Do I need to change my layout? Should I go through and place each button on a panel or is there a simpler way?
I feel like this should be an easy problem to fix yet I've been at it for over an hour now. I'd appreciate any ideas. Thanks

If you are new to Swing don't use a GUI builder as you will run into all sorts of issues like this one.
It sounds like your Layout is preventing resizing. Make sure you are using the correct Layout Manager for your designed look. Double check any constraints that you have set for the layout. You could experiment with a different layout manager like FlowLayout to check to make sure your setPreferredSize () calls are working correctly etc.

There are a number of ways to handle this:
A clean and easy way would be to create image icons for the different buttons, making them the same size. This lets you completely control what they will look like.
A quick-and-dirty way to do this is the add spaces until the buttons are approximately the same size. This won't be perfect because the fonts that appear on JButons are typically not fixed-width.
The 'proper' Swing way would be to use a custom Layout. For instance, if you use a GridBagLayout to arrange your components, and set the 'weightx' and 'weighty' for the JButton to 1.0, then it will take up as much space as possible, which will keep it the same size.

Add transparent JPanel upon AWT Component to paint on

I've got a Problem: In my Java application I've got an AWT Component (cannot change that one) that streams and shows an avi-file. Now I want to draw upon this movie and thought about putting a transparent JPanel above it and draw on that one.
This does not work since I either see the avi-stream or the drawn lines but not both.
I read somewhere that AWT does not support transparency of components - but the panel is a JPanel which is able to do so.
Can someone please help me with this one - thanks in advance.

The Mixing Light and Heavyweight Components article explains how this is handled only in the most recent version of the JDK.

did you try a GlassPane since i think thats exactly it's use case. soemthing like JFrame.setGlassPane() if i remember correctly. check here:
Java API JFrame
GlassPane examples

I've searched for a heavyweightcomponent that could help me but I didn't found one, and regarding the internalframes I don't know how you managed to set the opacity to 50. All what I found about seetting the opacity wast the method setOpaque(boolean value) and this doesn't help me at all. Would you please explaine me how did you set that opacity. It's my final alternative either that or I'll have to change my entire project design.

Try running Stream and Drawing on separate thread. I think this can help