Java Cookbook

A Tabbed View of Life

Problem

These layouts don’t include a tab layout, and you need one.

Solution

Use a JTabbedPane.

Discussion

The JTabbedPane class acts as a combined container and layout manager. It implements a conventional tab layout, which looks like Figure 13-2.

Figure 13-2. JTabbedPane: two views in Java Look and one in MS-Windows Look

To add a tab to the layout, you do not use setLayout( ). You simply create the JTabbedPane and call its addTab( ) method, passing in a String and a Component. Example 13-1 is the code for our simple program.

Example 13-1. TabPaneDemo.java

import javax.swing.*;

public class TabPaneDemo {
    protected JTabbedPane tabPane;
    public TabPaneDemo(  ) {
        tabPane = new JTabbedPane(  );
        tabPane.add(new JLabel("One", JLabel.CENTER), "First");
        tabPane.add(new JLabel("Two", JLabel.CENTER), "Second");
    }

    public static void main(String[] a) {
        JFrame f = new JFrame("Tab Demo");
        f.getContentPane().add(new TabPaneDemo(  ).tabPane);
        f.setSize(120, 100);
        f.setVisible(true);
    }
}

See Also

The third screen shot in Figure 13-2 shows the program with a MS-Windows look and feel, instead of the default Java look and feel. See Section 13.13 for how to change the look and feel of a Swing-based GUI application.