Java AWT Reference

6

Containers

In this chapter:

• Container
• Panel
• Insets
• Window
• Frames
• Dialogs
• FileDialog

This chapter covers a special type of Component called Container. A Container is a subclass of Component that can contain other components, including other containers. Container allows you to create groupings of objects on the screen. This chapter covers the methods in the Container class and its subclasses: Panel, Window, Frame, Dialog, and FileDialog. It also covers the Insets class, which provides an internal border area for the Container classes.

Every container has a layout associated with it that controls how the container organizes the components in it. The layouts are described in Chapter 7, Layouts.

Java 1.1 introduces a special Container called ScrollPane. Because of the similarities between scrolling and ScrollPane, the new ScrollPane container is covered with the Scrollbar class in Chapter 11, Scrolling.

6.1 Container

Container is an abstract class that serves as a general purpose holder of other Component objects. The Container class holds the methods for grouping the components together, laying out the components inside it, and dealing with events occurring within it. Because Container is an abstract class, you never see a pure Container object; you only see subclasses that add specific behaviors to a generic container.

6.1.1 Container Methods

Constructors

The abstract Container class contains a single constructor to be called by its children. Prior to Java 1.1, the constructor ...