Customizing Layouts of JComponents

[Krocker]

Hi, so im trying to create a gui that looks like this the image attached. I made the buttons, and the gui itself, but im hacing trouble positioning the text area and making the scroll bar. Can someone please show me how i can do this.

This is what i have so far in terms of the creating the gui:

code:

import java.awt.BorderLayout; import java.awt.GridLayout; import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.awt.event.ActionListener; import javax.swing.*; public class FileSummeryGui extends JFrame {                 private JButton open, clear, save;         private JLabel label;         private JPanel panel;         private JTextArea text;                 /**          * Constructs the frame and components of the GUI; initializes the variables.          */         public FileSummeryGui(){                 createComponents();                         }                 /**          * Creates and adds all the required components for the GUI and attaches the Actionlistener          */         public void createComponents(){                 open = new JButton("Open File");                 clear = new JButton("Clear Display");                 save = new JButton("Save File");                 text = new JTextArea (10 , 10);                 text.setEditable(false);                 panel = new JPanel();                 label = new JLabel();                 panel.add(open);                 panel.add(clear);                 panel.add(save);                 add(panel);              }

[Krocker]

Anyone? I know it might be a basic concept, but this is my 1st time using guis in java. Please someone help?

[Zren]

Designing GUIs is one of the reasons I love the Netbeans IDE. It comes with a fairly awesome swing editor. I find that looking at the code it generates instils good coding practice, even though it's probably going to throw a lot of stuff at you on first glance.

To solve your problem though, I made a quick GUI in the editor. I used an actual menu instead of buttons though, so you can't copy it exactly ;]. It looks like what it generated wrapped the TextArea in a ScrollPane.

For the layouts, it seems to use a GroupLayout.

In order to get the title + boder thing it's got going on, you need to put the ScrollPane inside a Panel. Then set the border of the Panel to something like BorderFactory.createTitledBorder("Blarg").

What this code looks like:

Java:

private void initComponents() {         jPanel1 = new javax.swing.JPanel();         jScrollPane1 = new javax.swing.JScrollPane();         jTextArea1 = new javax.swing.JTextArea();         jMenuBar1 = new javax.swing.JMenuBar();         jMenu1 = new javax.swing.JMenu();         jMenuItem1 = new javax.swing.JMenuItem();         jMenuItem2 = new javax.swing.JMenuItem();         jMenu2 = new javax.swing.JMenu();         setDefaultCloseOperation(javax.swing.WindowConstants.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);         jPanel1.setBorder(javax.swing.BorderFactory.createTitledBorder("Blarg"));         jTextArea1.setColumns(20);         jTextArea1.setLineWrap(true);         jTextArea1.setRows(5);         jTextArea1.setText("1\n2\n3\n4\n5\n6\n7\n8\n9\n09\n2\n34\n4\n54\n565\n6\n6");         jScrollPane1.setViewportView(jTextArea1);         javax.swing.GroupLayout jPanel1Layout = new javax.swing.GroupLayout(jPanel1);         jPanel1.setLayout(jPanel1Layout);         jPanel1Layout.setHorizontalGroup(             jPanel1Layout.createParallelGroup(javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.LEADING)             .addGroup(jPanel1Layout.createSequentialGroup()                 .addContainerGap()                 .addComponent(jScrollPane1, javax.swing.GroupLayout.PREFERRED_SIZE, 375, javax.swing.GroupLayout.PREFERRED_SIZE)                 .addContainerGap(20, Short.MAX_VALUE))         );         jPanel1Layout.setVerticalGroup(             jPanel1Layout.createParallelGroup(javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.LEADING)             .addGroup(jPanel1Layout.createSequentialGroup()                 .addContainerGap()                 .addComponent(jScrollPane1, javax.swing.GroupLayout.DEFAULT_SIZE, 268, Short.MAX_VALUE))         );         jMenu1.setText("File");         jMenuItem1.setText("Open");         jMenu1.add(jMenuItem1);         jMenuItem2.setText("Save");         jMenu1.add(jMenuItem2);         jMenuBar1.add(jMenu1);         jMenu2.setText("Clear");         jMenuBar1.add(jMenu2);         setJMenuBar(jMenuBar1);         javax.swing.GroupLayout layout = new javax.swing.GroupLayout(getContentPane());         getContentPane().setLayout(layout);         layout.setHorizontalGroup(             layout.createParallelGroup(javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.LEADING)             .addComponent(jPanel1, javax.swing.GroupLayout.DEFAULT_SIZE, javax.swing.GroupLayout.DEFAULT_SIZE, Short.MAX_VALUE)         );         layout.setVerticalGroup(             layout.createParallelGroup(javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.LEADING)             .addComponent(jPanel1, javax.swing.GroupLayout.DEFAULT_SIZE, javax.swing.GroupLayout.DEFAULT_SIZE, Short.MAX_VALUE)         );         pack();     }