How do I repaint after tooltip disappears? - java

I've created an applet which has one large panel to display data surrounded by several controls (buttons, textfields, etc.). The large panel contains several layers of labels which I render myself.
The controls all have tooltips associated with them, and some of these tooltips overlap the main panel. When they disappear, they leave a hole in the main panel image until the main panel is repainted.
Now mind you, this does not always happen. It only occurs when the cursor is in a certain range. If you get far enough to either the left or right (no difference noted for changes along the Y axis), the holes are painted over when the tooltip disappears.
I'm not well-versed on how tooltips and repainting are supposed to work, and if this is a sign that there's something dreadfully wrong with my program, but if I can just call repaint on the main panel whenever the tooltip disappears, I should be fine. Is there something I can override in tooltip to make this happen?
I'm using Swing
Thanks.

To answer your question (after you found a solution by the comments): Swing has some quite elaborate repaint management built in. When a tooltip disappears, the rectangle below it is repainted.
Now, which components have to be repainted? All those who overlap with the given rectangle, and are not themselves hidden (in the region in question) by other components - but only opaque components count here. (This is the whole reason we need the opaque property on JComponent - to optimize repainting.)
Your label declared itself being opaque, but did not really paint its whole area on a paintComponent, and such the region of the tooltip which should have been covered by the label stayed unpainted.
Declaring your label to be partly transparent caused also the concerning region of the component behind it to be repainted.

Related

Java - Graphical glitches on background repaint

I'm making a microwave simulation program and having an annoying problem. I want the microwaves viewing window to change color on a button press, to visualize that the microwave is on. However, because I also have a jlabel with an icon (food image) in the background, I need the background to be semi transparent. I've accomplished this adding an alpha value to the jPanel (cookingWindow).
It starts like this
So what I've basically done is set an actionEvent to the start button with the following code.
cookingWindow.setBackground(new Color (250,234,1, 150));
cookingWindow.repaint();
This works, except this happens
When I minimise and maximise the window, everything goes back to place. But obviously, it would be preferable if you didn't have to minimise the window. Any ideas on how to stop this visual bug?
See Backgrounds With Transparency for an explanation of the problem and a couple of solutions.
Basically the problem is how the Swing opaque property handles transparent backgrounds (it doesn't).
Revalidating and repainting the jFrame seems to do fix everything up. I was previously only repainting the jPanel.

Swing components twitch when resizing JFrame

I have an undecorated JFrame which has a lot of components inside it (such as JSplitPanes, JPanels with GridBagLayouts, BoxLayouts, BorderLayouts etc). The code of building this JFrame is 2500 lines length, so I wouldn't place it here, or it's simpled version, sorry.
When I drag the JFrame by right or bottom side, it resizes OK, but when I drag it by left or top side, the components inside the JFrame are twitching a lot, so it looks very ugly.
My question is: Why does it happen? How can I prevent it (if I can)? Does anyone fix that in own practice?
UPD: I've written my own resizer for JFrame. It works OK for other windows, which have less amount of components.
Resizing the frame implicitly validates the enclosed Container, which causes doLayout() to be invoked on the affected components each time the size changes. You can see a similar effect in repeated calls to paintComponent() when resizing this AnimationTest. As you observe, using thousands of components scales poorly. As an alternative, leverage the flyweight pattern to render only visible cells, as is done in JTable, JTree, JList, etc. If you can't use one of these, CellRendererPane, seen here, may help.

How can I change colors of components when the mouse is pressed in a JFrame in Java?

I am coding a piano in java using rectangles from the java.awt.graphics library. I am using a mouselistener to play the sound of each individual key when the mouse clicks a certain area on the JFrame.
How would I add a shape to the panel upon clicking, repaint, then repaint the keyboard back over top when the user releases the mouse?
Consider adding JLabels to a JPanel that uses GridLayout. Give each JLabel a MouseListener and either swap ImageIcons on mousePress/mouseRelease or change the JLabel's background with press and release. If you go the latter route, you'll want to make sure that the JLabels opaque property is set to true so that the background colors show.
Then for the black keys, you can add the above JPanel to a JLayeredPane and on top of this, add another JPanel that holds the black keys that function in the same way.
Also, you'll want to take care to "play" any notes in a background thread, such as can be obtained with a SwingWorker so as not to tie up the Swing event thread and completely freeze your program.
Consider solution: source
It might not be exactly what you're after, but it might give you an idea of how to approach your problem. It took me a long time to figure out how to use JLayeredPane without setting a null layout, but in the end this was the best I could come up with. Also, assumed some naming conventions for your sound files. :p

ToolTip flicker in Java if outside JFrame?

I am implementing ToolTip in Java as to make users having an easier time to use the product. Though tooltip that are at the borders of the JFrame and ends up outside the JFrame starts to "flicker". I've tried lots of things (like moving the tooltip so it should be inside the Jframe, controlling the painting so it ends up within the JFrame and so on) though it doesn't work.
Anyone got any expertise within the field that know how to avoid this problem?
Cheers,
Skarion
When a tooltip is displayed in a JFrame, Swing does not create a floating window, it simply paints the tooltip in the graphic context of the JFrame. This does not generate any flickering.
On the other hand, when a tooltip is outside the boundaries of the JFrame, it becomes heavyweight: a window is created to host the tooltip component. Flickering occurs when the tooltip window appears.
Maybe setting "-Dsun.awt.noerasebackground=true" would help because it prevents one step of background repainting of the hosting window.

Java - control Z order of JPanels

In short, my need is to have a background Image in my java app, and upon some event, create some other graphics on top of that image.
I was thinking I would use a JPanel to draw the background image in, add it at to my JFrame the start of program, and then add other JPanels on top of that upon certain events. The problem is Swing gives the JPanels added first the highest Z index, so what should be my background is showing up on top of everything.
Is there any way to control the Z index/order of the JPanels, or am I going about this completely wrong?
You can use the setComponentZOrder() to handle Z-Order in your application.
Resources :
JavaDoc - Container.setComponentZOrder
oracle.com - Mixing heavy and light components
Sounds strange to add mutiple JPanels and use z-order. I would suggest you either simple add ONE JPanel with the paintComponent(Graphics g) method overwritten, where you draw the correct image according to your events.
Or use the CardLayout, and add JLabels (with different images), then when your event triggers, use
CardLayout cl = (CardLayout)getLayout();
cl.show(this, "card3");
to show the correct JLabel.
The JLayeredPane is designed for just this purpose. It allows you to control the Z-order of components.
I was thinking I would use a JPanel to
draw the background image in, add it
at to my JFrame the start of program,
Sounds reasonable.
and then add other JPanels on top of
that upon certain events. The problem
is Swing gives the JPanels added first
the highest Z index, so what should be
my background is showing up on top of
everything.
Adding a panel to a panel is just like adding another component to the panel. The child component will be painted on top of the parent panel. There is no need to play around with Z-Order.
The key is to set a layout manager on the panel with the image. Then each panel you add to the image panel must be made non-opaque so that the background image will be painted.
Maybe the Background Panel can help you out. It automatically makes any component added directly to the panel non-opaque.

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