I am making a UI with Swing, and I want the buttons I am using for my custom dialogs to have the same style as the ones in standard dialogs.
For instance, in the attached image I have a custom dialog and the standard file select dialog. I want the 'OK' and 'Cancel' buttons from the file select dialog to be used for the equivalent buttons in my custom dialog.
I want my application to use the default system look and feel of whatever OS it is running on, so I don't want to try to manually re-create these standard buttons. Using a more rigid Swing class that automatically provides these buttons wouldn't work either, as I'd like to also use them in other, more exotic places in my UI.
Is there an easy solution to this problem?
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it look like there is no standard way to do this cross-platform. The behaviours, mnemonics and icons on default buttons are handled in very specific ways by each look-and-feel.
Here is a SO question that answers the question on how to set the default OK and Cancel buttons on a dialog (the default button is set using getRootPane().setDefaultButton(...) and the Cancel button needs a custom keyboard listener. If you're very lucky, setting the default button might add an icon to it, depending on how the UI is coded.
This forum thread addresses the issue of getting icon resources from the UIManager. Each LaF has a set of UI defaults such as colors, text, borders and icons. There are a number of default icons which are found across all LaFs, but for non-standard icons, such as ones on buttons, there are no guarantees. However, if you tell me which LaF you are using in the screenshot you provided, I can look up the resource keys used by its custom UI classes (or you can find it yourself if you have the source). You could then write a helper method which looks for the icons via these keys, and adds them to the buttons if they are found.
JButton.setUI(ButtonUI) sets the UI for just one JButton. Use that in conjunction with a factory:
public static JButton createStyledButton(String text) {
JButton button = new JButton(text);
button.setUI(STYLE_UI);
return button;
}
Related
I've only found ways to completely remove title bar + borders. I want to create a window in Swing without title bar buttons but still retain the default system's border. Is this possible?
The following link has a complete working example that uses remove() on the buttons:
http://www.coderanch.com/t/344419/GUI/java/deactivate-close-minimise-resizable-window
You can use the frame's setUndecorated() method and render your own decorations. You may want to leverage the JInternalFrame UI defaults, which typically recapitulate those of the platform's default Look & Feel, as shown here. These seem especially relevant:
InternalFrame.activeTitleBackground
InternalFrame.activeTitleForeground
InternalFrame.inactiveTitleBackground
InternalFrame.inactiveTitleForeground
I've used
chkBox.setIcon();
chkBox.setSelectedIcon();
chkBox.setDisabledIcon();
chkBox.setDisabledSelectedIcon();
to set custom icons for my JCheckbox. But now, if the focus moves to one of the checkboxes, there is no border shown around them or anything else, which tells that the checkbox has focus.
Does anyone know, how to give some feedback when a customized checkbox has focus?
Thanks
Your problem definitely depends on Look and Feel (L&F) that you are using in your application (if you don't setup one - i guess you are using MetalLookAndFeel?).
Anyway, there might be a lot of solutions:
Check that your JCheckBox is actually focusable and focus painted. Be aware that some L&F might switch off focus painting - check checkBox.setFocusPainted() method.
If you are not satisfied with default focus painting - you might want to create your own CheckBoxUI that paints a better focus indicator. That requires some basic knowledge in UIs creation though.
If you want to paint focus indication straight on the check icon itself you can create your own Icon-based implementation that paints it together with current check state. I have posted a custom Icon example in other topic about state-dependant icon if you want to see a real example.
There might be other solutions but they depends on the L&F you are using...
You can use this ready-to use checkbox alternative:
http://codetoearn.blogspot.com/2013/01/swing-fantasy-checkbox-with-customized.html
I have this form where there are extendable controls like there's a textbox for the user to type and beside it is an add button which the user would use to add another textbox beneath the previous one.
My problem is i don't even know how to make that add button work so that another textarea/textbox would appear just beneath the previous control..im doing it in netbeans ide 7.0 and in design mode...
I have researching for quite a while now and i'm so confused already what to do..at least you could provide me with an idea not really the code.
You should create a Layout.
For your case (Form kinda layout) , it seems that you need GridLayout.
For example, please check this link for all type of layout or directly go to Grid Layout link.
Since you're going to be dynamically adding controls to your form, you'd simply want to put in a panel where you want the textbox and the button. Inside that panel place your textbox and button, you'd probably not want to use netbeans to do this, and use a LayoutManager like GridLayout. Now you'lld want to connect your button to an ActionListener that adds a textfiield to the panel.
See the Nested Layout Example for an example of (amongst other things) adding components to a GUI dynamically.
I am creating an options dialog using JOptionPane.showOptionDialog(...)
When I click one of the buttons added to this dialog, I need a label to apear underneath on the dialog (and this label should be scrollable if necessary). I have written event handlers for the buttons, but I am not sure how to get this label to appear on the dialog.
Any help would be great.
Update: I realized that it would be ok if I somehow called JOptionPane.showOptionDialog(...) with an initial message, and then when one of the buttons was clicked I would change the message. Is this possible?
JOptionPane static methods are only shortcuts to easily create a dialog with option buttons and a fixed message. If you check the source from it, you will see that all is wrapped in this purpose. It's only a convenience class over a frequent use case of dialogs.
The suggestion from comment is correct, if you want more than this, you will have to create your own JDialog, as it will be easier than trying to change something from this generated dialog.
Edit: You can create your own JDialog yourself, using layout managers. A more simple way, suggested as well in the previous link, is to use a GUI builder, like the one included in Netbeans.
I can set the title bar background when maximised using InternalFrame.activeTitleBackground and InternalFrame.inactiveTitleBackground but how do I set it when the internal frame is minimised?
There is no easy solution. The frame colors are part of the UI, so you will need to create a custom UI to do what you want. You can start by searching the Java source code to see where the "activeTitleBackground" and "inactiveTitleBackground" properties are used. That will give you an idea of the class and method that needs to be customized.