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Closing/Disposing JFrame that's been instantiated by a parent JFrame with an 'exit' button

I realize it's pointless to include a button that would do the exact same thing as the 'x' in the window, but I've already worked out the placement of my buttons on my GUI and found having the exit button made things much easier if nothing but a placeholder. And I like the practice.
Ok anyways moving on.
I have a parent JFrame (main class actually) that I'd like to keep running open the entire time the program is being run. This isn't my issue. My problem is when opening a child JFrame. I instantiate it in the main class (it's adding a panel component I created) and I just can't figure out how close said JFrame from within the Panel. Is there an easy way of doing so? I already have the WindowConstant set to Dispose on Close.
What I've done so far is created a method getExit() which returns a boolean value of true. I then have in the main class where the JFrame was instantiated an if/else if statement telling it to set the JFrame visible if exit is False, and dispose of it if true. Doesn't do anything. I'm guessing that's because either it's not bothering to check at all or I coded it poorly.
Any advice?
EDIT: Clarifying what my code is so far without posting it (600 lines of crap to get through). I have my main class Driver(). It's the fairly straight forward main JFrame 'form'.
Said class has several buttons to open up a new JFrame that performs a simple function. We'll name one of those classes (only have 3 total for the Secondary JFrames) Panel(int type) It extends JPanel.
I have a constructor set up depending that takes the int type and hides certain components in my Panel (tried to maximize the panel by combining similar functions). I have a button on the panel that is an exit button. But because the class itself is not a JFrame and does not instantiate itself, I can't dispose of it there. I have to find a way to do so in the main class.
That is my issue.

See Closing an Application. You can use the ExitAction for your JButton and it will be just like clicking the close button of the frame.

How to put JFrame into existing JPanel in Java Swing?

I have an open-source java swing application like this:
http://i47.tinypic.com/dff4f7.jpg
You can see in the screenshot, there is a JPanel divided into two area, left and right area. The left area has many text links. When I click the SLA Criteria link, it will pop-up the SLA Criteria window. The pop-up window is JFrame object.
Now, I'm trying to put the pop-up window into right area of the JPanel, so that means no pop-up window anymore, i.e. when I click the SLA Criteria link, its contents will be displayed at the right area of the JPanel. The existing content of the right area of JPanel will not be used anymore. The concept is just same like in the java api documentation page: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api. You click the link in the left frame, you'll get the content displayed at the right frame.
The example illustration is like this:
(note: it's made and edited using image editor, this is not a real screenshot of working application)
http://i48.tinypic.com/5vrxaa.jpg
So, I would like to know is there a way to put JFrame into JPanel?
I'm thinking of using JInternalFrame, is it possible? Or is there another way?
UPDATE:
Source code:
http://pastebin.com/tiqRbWP8 (VTreePanel.java, this is the panel with left & right area divisions)
http://pastebin.com/330z3yuT (CPanel.java, this is the superclass of VTreePanel and also subclass from JPanel)
http://pastebin.com/MkNsbtjh (AWindow.java, this is the pop-up window)
http://pastebin.com/2rsppQeE (CFrame.java, this is the superclass of AWindow and also subclass from JFrame)

Instead of trying to embed the frame, you want to embed the frame's content.
There is (at least) one issue I can see with this.
The menu bar is controlled by the frame's RootPane.
Create you're self a new JPanel. Set it's layout to BorderLayout.
Get the menu bar from the frame (using JFrame#getJMenuBar) and added to the north position of you new panel.
Get the frames ContentPane and add it to the center position of the panel.
There is undoubtedly countless other, application specific issues you will run into trying to do this...

No, you don't want to "put a JFrame into a JPanel" and your illustration above doesn't demonstrate this either. Instead it's showing a subordinate window on top of (not inside of) another window. If you absolutely need to display a new subordinate window, I'd recommend that you create and display a JDialog. The tutorials will explain how to do this, or if you get stuck post your code attempt and we'll help you work with this.
Edit 1
You state:
I need to convert from the pop-up window style into the jpanel content style. It's just like the java api documentation page style: docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api When you click the text in left frame, it doesn't show any pop-up, right? The content is displayed at right frame directly. So that's basicly my goal. The source code is quite big. I will try to paste the source code if possible.
What you are looking for is to simply implement a MouseListener in a JList or JTable, and when responding to the click get the content based on the selection made. This has nothing to do with placing a JFrame in a JPanel and all to do with writing the correct program logic. Again, display it in a modal JDialog -- but that's all secondary to your writing the correct non-GUI logic. You're really barking up the wrong tree here. Forget about JFrames, forget about JPanels for the moment and instead concentrate on how you're going to extract the SLA Criteria data when it is clicked on.
Edit 2
I think I see what you're trying to do -- instead of JFrames and JDialogs, use JPanels and swap them using a CardLayout which would allow you to swap views.

I had skimming the source codes, I saw that the AWindow.java has internal panel (APanel.java) to hold the window's content, and it also has a public method to return the content panel object (getAPanel()). With this, I can use it for fetching the window's contents into other container.
Finally, I decided to use JTabbedPane in the right area of VTreePanel for displaying the pop-up window's contents.

You cannot put a Jframe into a JPanel. Instead you should try to create a separate panel that has functionalities like your JFrame and embed that into your JPanel.
Since you can put a JPanel into another JPanel but not a JFrame into another JPanel

Minimize and Maximize JFrame on custom events in Java Swing

If I have two JFrames where one is the main JFrame, and the other one pops up when I click something. Now what I want is that when the new frame pops up, the main one should be minimized. Also when I click on this popup frame to close it, the main should be restored back.
Essentially I want to know, how can we maximize and minimize a JFrame apart from the default click operation. Is there any function for doing this on custom click for example?

1) setDefaultCloseOperation to NOTHING_ON_CLOSE
2) addWindowListener to JFrame
3) overrive windowsClosing() method with proper Action for iconify ...
4) don't forget to set to the JMenuItem/JButton System.exit(1), because in this form current JVM instence never gone from PC RAM or swap area until PC restarted or switch off
5) better would be to change 2nd. JFrame to the JDialog because in most cases is too hard manage lots of methods betweens two JFrames
setPatent
setModal
setModalityTypes

JPanels, Listeners and Threads

For a school project I'm writing a BlackJack card game in JAVA.
After a few steps within the program, my whole computer system slows down/stutters and some areas within the JFrame turn black. No repainting seems te be happening.
I will give you some program details in words rather then submitting the code.
I have done some extensive extending of almost every GUI component to give it the look and feel that I want. Almost every child of JComponent that I use has got its paintComponent rewriten with custom image backgrounds and anti-aliasing where applicable.
In my (custom) JFrame I load an extended version of JPanel. This panel holds all the GUI components for that screen. When I want to switch screen (go to a different part of the program), I switch to another extended version of JPanel. I do this by removing all elements from the JFrame and add the new panel. These different panels implements ActionListeners and FocusListeners.
At this point my thoughts are leaning towards a thread handling issue. My theory for the moment is this: When a panel is constructed for display in the JFrame (each on different stages within te program), the previous constructed panels aren't realy 'destroyed', and the Listeners of those panels remain active.
My question for you people is, wether this theory holds ground... And in that case, is there a way to 'kill' these panels or at least stop the listening?
If my theory doesn't make sense, what else could be causing these symptoms? Could it be the extensive overwriting of the paintComponent methods?
Any ideas would be highly appriciated!
Regards Wilco

When a panel is constructed for display in the JFrame (each on different stages within te program), the previous constructed panels aren't realy 'destroyed', and the Listeners of those panels remain active.
No. Events are only dispatched to the component that has focus. It a comonents doesn't have focus then it won't received system generated events like KeyEvents and MouseEvents. So if a panel isn't visible then it won't receive events.
I switch to another extended version of JPanel. I do this by removing all elements from the JFrame and add the new panel.
This is not the best design. It is better to use a Card Layout which was designed for this purpose.
Almost every child of JComponent that I use has got its paintComponent rewriten with custom image backgrounds and anti-aliasing where applicable
Then you probably have problems with your custom painting. What happens when you just use the standard components without custom painting?

Working with frames and Java AWT

I am currently making a program with the AWT GUI and I'm running into a problem. I basically want an image in the top left hand corner of the screen, and a column of buttons on the right of the image. This isn't what's happening though. When I run the applet, I click a popup saying "Start Program" and then the picture I want is in the applet window itself and the column of buttons is in another window by itself. This is what it looks like:
Is there anyway to fix this so that the image and the buttons are in the same window?

Yeah. You're creating a frame but your graphic isn't inside the frame. Can't tell much without the code, but the AWT Tutorial at java.sun.com isn't bad on this stuff.
Okay, a little more (I haven't used AWT in a long time.)
Here's the couple of issues you have. A Frame is a kind of Window -- it wants to be a separate window with its own close button and so forth.
When you create your graphic, you have to tell it was component its parent is; you're somehow parenting it to the Applet. So you have some piece of code that looks like
add(myComponent);
in the context of the Applet as this.
public class myApplet extends Applet {
// lots of stuff here creating your canvas, putting the image in it
// and so forth. There's an example, see fn 1.
// When you're done, you have a component, call it myImage.
add(myImage);
}
You have a Frame, and you're adding your buttons to that.
public class MyFrame extends Frame {
add(new Button(...));
add(new Button(...));
}
You need to move the code that adds your Canvas into the Frame class in some method.
(WARNING: this is not complete Java code, I don't recall the names of the right methods offhand. Probably the init() method in the Applet, at least.
fn1. http://java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/awt/contents.html#simpleexample