Advanced Topics on Graphical User Interfaces

1
Advanced Topics onGraphical User Interfaces

• CardLayout
• JTabbedPane
• JFrame

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CardLayout

• Layout manager that allows you to group multiple
  panels but display just one of them at a time
• How to set it up
• Suppose p1, p2, p3 are the panels you want to
  group
• Create a main panel governed by a CardLayout
  manager and add p1, p2, p3 as cards to that panel
• The main panel and the CardLayout object should
  be defined as fields of the class
• Call methods on the CardLayout object to cause a
  particular card to be displayed

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CardLayout continued

• Suppose cl is the CardLayout object and mp is the
  main panel
• Both of these variables should be defined as
  fields so they are accessible from init() and
  actionPerformed()
• CardLayout methods
• cl.first( mp ) // displays the first card
• cl.next( mp ) // displays the next card
• cl.show( mp, name ) // displays the named card

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JTabbedPane

• Not a layout manager but a component that also
  allows you to create many panels but display only
  one of them at a time
• Shifting the panel that is displayed done by
  selecting a tab
• How to set it up
• Create the panels
• Create a JTabbedPane object
• Call addTab( tabname, panel ) method on that
  object for each panel to add the panels to the
  pane

5
JFrame

• You can create GUIs that are applications(not
  applets)
• How to set it up
• Extend JFrame instead of JApplet(e.g., MyFrame
  extends JFrame )
• Code originally in init() should be placed in the
  constructor of the class( e.g., public MyFrame()
  )
• In some main() method, instantiate that class(
  e.g., MyFrame f new MyFrame() )
• Need to call some JFrame methods on the object to
  resize and display the frame

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JFrame methods

• f.setSize( width, height )
• f. setTitle( string )
• f. setVisible( true )
• Displays the frame
• f. setDefaultCloseOperation( JFrame.CLOSE_ON_EXIT
  )
• So that the x button closes and exits