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JComboBox: arrow-button should be shown at any time

If a JComboBox is not selected, the arrow-button on the right is not shown. This leads to the fact that a combo-box cannot be distinguished from a normal textfield.
The question is now: how is it possible to show the arrow-button permanently? I alrady came across BasicComboBoxUI.createArrowButton() etc., but I did not find out the mechanism of hiding / showing the arrow-button.
Can anyoune give me a hint how to show the arrow-button permanently ?

Can you add below code as first line in your main method.
Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().setDesktopProperty("win.xpstyle.themeActive",Boolean.FALSE);
and then check your program.

sorry for the inconvenience. Everything is clear now. In have been told that we use a special framework which changes the behaviour. This information would have been useful if given to me earlier... :-(

What is the best way to make clickable text in java?

This is for an application so I don't want a hyperlink. I first tried using a Jbutton without all of border/background stuff and then hooking up an actionListener to it but I couldn't get it to the point where I thought it looked nice. I also tried using a JLabel and hooking up a mouse listener to that but I also couldn't get it to look right.
Basically I would like a way using swing to make a button exactly like a url link in an application. What is the standard way of doing this?

but I couldn't get it to the point where I thought it looked nice
You might want to go into greater detail on just what "looked nice" means. I can see you solving this by either a JButton or a JLabel, but the key is perhaps not to look for another solution but to play with the settings of the button or the label til they look nice. If you can't find a nice solution, then post your code (an SSCCE would work best of all) and perhaps we can help you.

that isn't answer to your question but are you tried to add ButtonModel to your JButton example here

It is a rather heavy hammer to use, but SwingX has a JXHyperLink control that is probably exactly what you want. The source is at http://java.net/projects/swingx/sources/svn/content/trunk/swingx-core/src/main/java/org/jdesktop/swingx/JXHyperlink.java?rev=4027 and you can see an article about it at http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t18617.html.
It is old, but SwingX continues to do good things.

It's you're trying to make a desktop application which looks like HTML inside a browser, you might try using some of the richer Swing text components in a read-only mode. You could use a mouse-listener to map X/Y clicks to a particular character of text, and then cause an action to occur on that basis.

Adding text input to a blackberrycanvas

The BlackBerryCanvas documentation says:
This class extends the functionality of the Canvas class to include full touch support and featured text input support.
I have extended BlackBerryCanvas, but am having trouble adding any text input.
It's not that I know what to do but cannot get it work -- I simply do not know how to add a text input box or field.
EDIT: Or have I misunderstood and this is not possible? From reading around, it seems as though it is, but I'm starting to wonder why it's so hard to find anything on it.
EDIT2: I'm think maybe it's something to do with the BlackBerryTextBox?
EDIT3:
Applications using this class can call the #setInputHelper method to get the text input support.
might also be something. It hasn't given me quite enough clues to be able to do it myself though I'm afraid.
Thanks.

If you don't particularly need to use the Canvas hierarchy, I suggest you use the more commonly used Field hierarchy.
That means you should create an application and start with a Screen. An easy concrete implementation of Screen is the FullScreen. To get the text input you are seeking, add an AutoTextEditField to the screen.

java-gui creation approaches via description files?

I have the following requirement for a GUI, that the user will have a number of available actions to perform.
Currently, it is implemented a series of JButtons that the user presses.
But the actions are a lot, and in each version more "actions" would be possibly offered.
I am not sure how this is better presented/done in GUIs.
I have read that there are ways to form a gui describing relevant information in an xml file.
I am using Netbeans and swing. Is the xml a good idea, to describe the actions available and for example create the same number of buttons? If yes, how would I start on this?Additionally would a jtoobar be a good idea for the actions? I mean add as many buttons as needed in the Jtoolbar.
I guess this is a general question but I am not experienced in GUIs.
Any help would be appreciated!
Thank you.

There seems to be two separate issues involved:
How to describe and create a large number of actions?
How to represent a large number of actions in GUI?
#Tom's answer is for #1, and #Fabio's for #2.
You can use any textual format for #1, xml, csv, whatever you like. It's indeed a good idea to separate that from code. XML is great for hierarchical data, so it may be overkill if you just need a flat list:
<doc>
<action name="Action 1" id="ACT1" description="blah blah" icon="icon1.gif"/>
<action name="Action 2" id="ACT2" description="yada yada" icon="icon2.gif"/>
...
</doc>
But parsing such a simple XML is basically free, so you may as well just use it. You do not, however, need a full-featured XML GUI toolkit like SwiXML, unless you want to add many other GUI widgets with complex layout to your app.
Note the attributes I have in the above sample. id would map to a unique action command. You can display description and icon (I suppose you use icon already) any way you want. You could also have other properties like mnemonic, accelerator, etc., at which point using XML starts to pay off: you can add arbitrary attributes that you need.
One obvious omission in the XML is the actual actions themselves. I do not think you should put Java code in XML. It defeats the separation of concern. Instead you can define your action code in a generic way (e.g. extend AbstractAction) and map them with the action IDs. If you do use AbstractAction, you can trivially map your attributes to action property keys like Action.NAME, Action.LONG_DESCRIPTION, etc.
Now you have parsed the XML into a list of action objects, and here comes the second question: how do you display them?
JList (per #Fabio) is indeed the most efficient way. It's much more compact than a whole bunch of individual buttons, yet unlike JComboBox you can see many items at once, and you can easily add sort/search/filter.
But list is not very flexible. You could use a custom ListCellRenderer to display icon and tooltip (for description), but you'll start to stretch it when you want to group items.
I think the most flexible way would be a tree table, which allows you to have multi-level hierarchy. You can start with 2 columns, the first column showing action names hierarchically, the second column showing description.
You could put the table in a collapsible panel so that it can be hidden when user wants to focus on the results.
Now w.r.t. JToolBar, you're right that it's standard, however as Fabio's comment pointed out, it's bad usability when you have too many buttons on a toolbar (like M$ Word before ribbon).
What would be a great use of a toolbar, however, is to allow user to place actions of their choice onto the toolbar, like most popular desktop apps do. You could use a "Customize Toolbar" dialog, or simply let user drag-n-drop items from your list or table.
Unfortunately, many of the GUI constructs that I mentioned above are not available in JDK. You can find all of them (tree table, search/filter, collapsible panel, customizable toolbar, etc.) from the excellent commercial JIDE libraries (disclaimer: I don't work for them, though I sometimes wish I do), or you can find FOSS alternatives.

I don't know if i did understand your question well, but it seems to me that the JButton approach isn't the most efficient way to do such thing. Imagine that the number of actions starts to be really big, drawing too much buttons leads to an unintuitive and non-appealing interface. An alternative would be using a JComboBox or a JList, to list all the actions not requiring much space and having a single button "do!" to execute the action.
I hope it was useful ;)

Contrary to popular belief around a decade ago, XML is not usually a good idea. An appropriate language to express this "programming" in is Java.

Drag and drop with an image

I need to create a drag and drop system in swing where an image of the thing being dragged is attached to the cursor during the drag. In theory this is achieveable with
public Icon TransferHandler.getVisualRepresentation(Transferable t)
but there appears to be a long standing bug (here) that means this method is never called. I know I can do it by implementing my own DnD system with DragSource etc., but does anyone know of an easier workround that will get me what I need?

The method TransferHandler.getVisualRepresentation wasn't supported in java 1.4, I'm not sure if or when it was fixed. To test whether it works in a current version you could adapt this example

In the end I used the old style drag-and-drop to implement what I wanted. However I have no reason to think abrightwell's solution wouldn't work just as well - this was just the best way at the time.

You could Try putting the image on a Jlabel (in the draggesture recognizer)and set its bounds, in the droptargetListener dragover method. Alternately, hows about implementing a Mouse listener (I've not tested this latter method).

I have used the "work around" suggested towards the bottom of the bug report you have listed. It worked well enough for me. Granted I was using this with Mac OS X so I have no idea whether Winderz will support it. It would be nice if they would at least fix it to work like they intended and simply document where it will and won't work... oh well. Good Luck.