[java] flowlayout question

I know the topic says "flowlayout question", but if you want to specify an exact location for a component just use AbsoluteLayout. This is usually used for dialogs that have resizing disabled.

If you want components that can resize based on the size of the frame, you'll have to use one of the more difficult layout managers, such as GridBagLayout. I suggest using NetBeans, which has a sweet GUI builder called Matisse. It uses GroupLayout by default, which just became a standard layout in Java6. So if you're developing a Java app using 1.4 or 1.5 you'll need to bundle an additional JAR file (NetBeans takes care of this for you). There's also an eclipse port of Matisse.

If you prefer coding the GUI by hand, check out MIGLayout.

Thanks for your help...

But how could I specify exactly where I want a button to be on the screen? For instance...

add(new Button("cancel", x, y));


is there anything like that or any way I can do that?

You can use the setBounds() method (Should work with Swing and AWT) , but you first need to make sure the parent container doesn't use any layout manager (It picks one by default).

This Trail has some really good information on Layout Managers.

For Example:

This is not recommended.

Why do you want to do this?

Quote:

Original post by marcmassacre Thanks for your help... But how could I specify exactly where I want a button to be on the screen? For instance... add(new Button("cancel", x, y)); is there anything like that or any way I can do that?

I'm sorry, I thought AbsoluteLayout was a standard Java layout but it's actually part of NetBeans (I've never used it myself). If you use it, you will have to bundle an additional JAR. But it does exactly what you asked.

This example places a new JButton at x=20, y=10.

Not to sound like a netbeans fanboy, but just to show you how powerful NetBeans gui creator is, I created this IE 7 style dialog in just a few minutes since my last post:



While it's not perfect since I threw it together quickly, it can easily be resized unlike a dialog created using AbsoluteLayout.