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Placing JButton in upper right

I want to place a JButton in the upper right corner of a JPanel. Currently, using BorderLayout, it is in the right, but the layout stretches the button. This is what I'm talking about:
What layout could I use to easily fix this?

You can put the button into a panel with another layout such as a GridBagLayout and then place this panel into the BorderLayout.EAST section like you were doing before.

Create another JPanel
Add the JButton to this panel
Add the panel to the WEST position of the container

You should use GridBagLayout and put the button in the third column, first row. Then make the other components grow or use more columns.
Read the documentation. GridBagLayout may be a bit difficult to understand but is the most flexible layout. Any other solution requires to use panels inside panels.
PS: Also, first answer talks about GridBagLayout, but BorderLayout.EAST is a constant from the BorderLayout

How to do a main menu layout in Java?

I'm working with a few people to design a game for a project in class. While making the main menu GUI, I searched all over for some way to get the design the way I wanted (here), but I couldn't figure it out. CardLayout, BoxLayout, BorderLayout, GridLayout, none of those have helped in what I'm trying to do, at least not the way I was implementing each layout. Is there some other layout that could help me with aligning the title text and 4 buttons to the left (horizontally) and aligned with each other vertically. Is it possible to use GridLayout with maybe 5 rows and 3 columns and just fill the 2nd and 3rd columns with nothing? I also want there to be sufficient padding between each object and from the bounds of the window.
This is what I've got so far, but this spreads the width of all the buttons across the entire window:
JLabel title = new JLabel("Inkball", JLabel.LEFT);
JPanel panel = new JPanel();
panel.setLayout(new GridLayout(5, 3, 0, 25));
panel.add(title);
panel.add(playNow);
panel.add(highScore);
panel.add(rules);
panel.add(exitGame);
Container c = this.getContentPane();
c.add(panel, BorderLayout.CENTER);

Start with a BorderLayout.
To this, add a JPanel that uses either a GridLayout or GridBagLayout, to the BorderLayout.WEST position of the parent container, this panel will be used to layout the options on the right
Add a JPanel with a CardLayout to the BorderLayout.CENTER position of the first container. This will will allow you to switch between views based on the selection of the user.
You will need to have the ability to obtain notification about user selection from the "menu pane" and update the "view pane". You simply use a ActionListener, registered to the "menu pane", which acts a proxy for the buttons actions and provide information about what the action menus via the actionCommand property of the JButtons and ActionEvent
Have a look at How to Use Buttons, Check Boxes, and Radio Buttons and Laying Out Components Within a Container for more details

Make buttons unresizable

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.

Why am I not getting a functioning JScrollPane?

I have a JFrame window, and I'd like to add a scrollable JTable towards the middle of it. I have a method, called collectionTableScrollPane() that generates the JScrollPane (and I know this is guaranteed to work).
I then proceed to add it to my mainPanel panel. However, I'd like there to be some forced 30px padding on the left and right of the JScrollPane. Logically, I would create a holding JPanel with a centred FlowLayout, and add Box.createHorizontalStrut(30) either side of the JScrollPane.
JPanel tableHolderPanel = new JPanel(new FlowLayout());
mainPanel.add(tableHolderPanel);
tableHolderPanel.add(Box.createHorizontalStrut(30));
tableHolderPanel.add(collectionTableScrollPane());
tableHolderPanel.add(Box.createHorizontalStrut(30));
However, I'm getting a strange result, where the JScrollPane in the middle of the window (denoted by the arrows) sort of becomes ineffectual.
Does anyone know what the problem is?
Note that the JTable contains four rows, of which only two are visible.

I had some issues in the past when i used a JScrollPane inside a panel with a FlowLayout. The behaviour could be tricky, when the content grow, the horizontal scrollbar may appear or the FlowLayout should add a new line.
In your case, i will replace the FlowLayout by a BorderLayout :
JPanel tableHolderPanel = new JPanel(new BorderLayout());
mainPanel.add(tableHolderPanel);
tableHolderPanel.add(Box.createHorizontalStrut(30), BorderLayout.WEST);
tableHolderPanel.add(collectionTableScrollPane(), BorderLayout.CENTER);
tableHolderPanel.add(Box.createHorizontalStrut(30), BorderLayout.EAST);

As far as I'm aware, Box is suppose to be used with the BoxLayout, this may be causing you some issues. Instead, why not use a EmptyBorder on the tableHolderPane

BoxLayout accepting size that came from JComponents, the same issue with default FlowLayout pre_implemented for JPanel
you have to returns PreferredSize by overrode JPanel nested JScrollPane,
use another LayoutManager, e.g. GridBagLayout or todays MigLayout
use NestedLayout, by using BorderLayout where you put two JLabels (e.i. that returns PreferredSize) to the EAST and WEST area
everything depends if you really to want to create the empty area and if shoud be resiziable or not

Can you set a permanent size for a JPanel inside of a JFrame?

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.