I have a doubt in layouts.I have designed one layout using group layout using addgaps and groups.My Question is whether my design changes with screen size?That is I have designed layout for 15 inches monitor will the layout looks same in bigger size monitor screen?
Thank u
chaithu
It depends on how you designed the layout. If you assign sizes and positions to components using pixels, then it won't scale. If you made good use of preferredSize and other properties designed to work with dynamic sizes, then it will scale.
Which did you do? You say you used group layouts, which means your screen will most likely scale. How well it scales is another question entirely.
Do you not have the opportunity to try the layout on a larger monitor to see if it works?
If you make the window smaller, does it update the layout to fit components? If yes, then most probably it will look fine on larger screen, if not... anyways, group layout is intended for GUI builders (like NetBeans). For handmade GUI, Box and BorderLayout will do the job most of the time.
Related
When creating Swing GUI's, how can I best choose the horizontal and vertical gaps to be used to separate components? Something like asked here Windows Layout Look and Feel, but platform independent.
Generally I simply used 5 pixels for everything, that looked reasonable with the Windows Classic theme, but looks somewhat odd when running under Windows 8, especially when there are multiple nested container components (e.g. Dialog -> TabbedPane -> ScrollPane).
I have looked at UIDefaults, but there doesn't really seems to be any hints about component spacing there (I was hoping to find at least a few values that could be used as hints, but LayoutManagers seem to generally use hardcoded deafults, e.g. FlowLayout uses a hardcoded 5 pixel spacing).
What approaches can I take to make my layouts more look and feel aware (I am generally using the System Look and Feel) ?
If you want a layout of components that change a bit to fit your user's platform, then perhaps just use the user's system look and feel with:
UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());
Edit to provide solution for specifying more specific gaps.
To specify margin and padding between components you can try using a box layout. You might not need to use a box layout throughout the entire Swing code you have either, perhaps have a utility function you use right before you add a component that accepts a Swing component, and a left right top and bottom margin/padding. This function would then return you a JPanel with a box layout with the margin/padding passed, along with containing one component, the one you passed in.
I would like to ask if SpringLayout can do anything like absolute position because I think absolute position have problem when I maximize the frame and what do I have to use if I need to set JMenu and JToolBar and JTextField and JTable all in one line in order?
I tried to use Borderlayout but it give me very big JTextField. I tried Gridlayout it give also big JTextField I need it big but not as big as it shows up.
can SpringLayout do all the job
No. It is neither designed, nor intended to do 'all the job'.
Java GUIs might have to work on a number of platforms, on different screen resolutions & using different PLAFs. As such they are not conducive to exact placement of components. To organize the components for a robust GUI, instead use layout managers, or combinations of them1, along with layout padding & borders for white space2.
For absolute positioning, don't use a layout manager at all.
However, that's not really recommended. Usually you should use a layout that would scale.
See also this thread for more discussion.
i found note writing by java says
Note: This lesson covers writing layout code by hand, which can be
challenging. If you are not interested in learning all the details of
layout management, you might prefer to use the GroupLayout layout
manager combined with a builder tool to lay out your GUI. One such
builder tool is the NetBeans IDE. Otherwise, if you want to code by
hand and do not want to use GroupLayout, then GridBagLayout is
recommended as the next most flexible and powerful layout manager
I am trying to create a GUI for a program with an undefined number of rows but stay with two columns. Currently the only way I can get it to look how I want is using FlowLayout but the window of course needs to be smaller than desired. It needs to happen within one panel as well because it is being added to a tabbed pane.
What would be the best layout manager to solve the problem that is in the JDK? Or would just kind of brute forcing it with AbsoluteLayout be the best approach (as the user shouldn't really be resizing the window)?
I have attached the desired appearance.
Thanks for any help in advance.
Several layouts can do what you want. I'd suggest GridLayout (easy to use, but columns will be equal width) or GridBagLayout (harder to use, but you have lots of control). You could also use a BorderLayout and put all the fields in a sub-panel on the WEST and all the drop-downs in a sub-panel on the EAST. The difficulty with that is ensuring that the rows have the same height, since they won't be constrained by the layout itself.
The best thing to do would be to go through the Java tutorial on layouts and get up to speed on what the various layout managers can do.
Also, since you're using Swing, you could just use a JTable (as Gilbert Le Blanc suggests in his comment).
Recently, I started creating a program for the company I work for. Just as background info, I'm still a student and a beginner programmer, so my solution is probably not recommended and I didn't know how to do it otherwise, but it works and I'm not going to be judged for it because it's a student job totally unrelated to programming.
The thing about the program is, it's going to be run on multiple different computer with different screen sizes and resolutions (800x600 and up). To make sure it takes as much of the screen as possible without losing any part of the program, I set the layout to null and hard-coded everything using relative values.
The program is kiosk-style and I first get the screen size values and go from there (for example, off the top of my head, the left-side menu takes an eighth of the screen, the top bar 2%, etc.). I also use font metrics to make sure the components are sized correctly and that everything gets displayed nicely.
My question is: why is it so frowned upon to make the layout null instead of using the layout managers? (I was told on some forums that this is a horrible way of doing things) I know how the layout manager works and know how to use the different layouts, but for the requirements of this program (multiple different resolutions, custom button shapes and placements, text changing on the components when you change language, etc.), I couldn't see myself using the layout managers to do it all.
How do you more experienced programmers use the layout managers in a situation like this? And what do you do when you want a button to be somewhere specific and other components somewhere else specific that don't really match any of the predefined layouts?
If you layer the layout managers correctly the screen will re-flow to different sizes for you, the idea is to use a single set of layout managers on ALL screen sizes.
If you use null you will have to do each screen size yourself. Not only that but if the app can be windowed you have to support every possible size they might scroll to.
That's kind of difficult to do, but the layout mangers are designed to do just that.
There are some common tricks. BorderLayout is a great layout to start with. Sometimes you might use it at multiple levels--often with just 2 or 3 components in it. That's because it's really good at giving all but one area the minimum required area and giving everything else to the CENTER.
FlowLayout can be useful but it's tricky if your components are different sizes.
I wouldn't try GridBagLayout unless you are planning to write code to feed your layout manager (an excellent solution at that!).
I also wouldn't use GUI builders, they don't know the overall way you want to reflow your layout.
In a nutshell: because all the work that you explain above is done (or at least: should be done) by the layout manager.
More often than not, when a null layout is used, it also implies that all positions and sizes are hardcoded to a single value, so no flexibility at all is given. This means that changes in window size, language, font size, display density or any other related parameter have no effect on the layout and you get the usual ugly effects: empty parts of the window; tiny, unresizable lists; buttons with their labels cut off; ...
It sounds like the work you do should really be done by the Layout Manager. Either find one that does that (my personal suggestion would be MiGLayout, which does a lot and is easy to use) or write your own.
You are practically using a layout - your own, with all your sophisticated calculations of positions.
You can move these logic to a custom layout manager class to pacify the critics.
hmmm trick should be by mixing LayoutMangers and by usage of numbers of nested JPanels that each could have diferrent Layout or not, really depends of number of JComponents, that allows you to create GUI that looks like as layed by using AbsoluteLayout but with same look/output to the GUI for every screen resolutions and ratio (4:3, 16:9, 16:10)
I'm reasonably new to java GUIs and have been using netbeans to help me out.
I've set up a jButton such that when clicked its label changes. My issue is that the size of the button refuses to remain fixed despite setting a maximum and minimum size as well as the setting the preferredSize method. Do I need to change my layout? Should I go through and place each button on a panel or is there a simpler way?
I feel like this should be an easy problem to fix yet I've been at it for over an hour now. I'd appreciate any ideas. Thanks
If you are new to Swing don't use a GUI builder as you will run into all sorts of issues like this one.
It sounds like your Layout is preventing resizing. Make sure you are using the correct Layout Manager for your designed look. Double check any constraints that you have set for the layout. You could experiment with a different layout manager like FlowLayout to check to make sure your setPreferredSize () calls are working correctly etc.
There are a number of ways to handle this:
A clean and easy way would be to create image icons for the different buttons, making them the same size. This lets you completely control what they will look like.
A quick-and-dirty way to do this is the add spaces until the buttons are approximately the same size. This won't be perfect because the fonts that appear on JButons are typically not fixed-width.
The 'proper' Swing way would be to use a custom Layout. For instance, if you use a GridBagLayout to arrange your components, and set the 'weightx' and 'weighty' for the JButton to 1.0, then it will take up as much space as possible, which will keep it the same size.