Java Cookbook

Choosing a Color

Problem

You want to allow the user to select a color from all the colors available on your computer.

Solution

Use Swing’s JColorChooser.

Discussion

OK, so it may be just glitz or a passing fad, but with today’s displays, the 13 original AWT colors are too limiting. Swing’s JColorChooser lets you choose from zillions of colors. From a program’s view, it can be used in three ways:

• Construct it and place it in a panel

• Call its ConstructDialog( ) and get a JDialog back

• Call its showDialog( ) and get back the chosen color

We’ll use the last method, since it’s the simplest and the most likely to be used in a real application. The user has several methods of operating the chooser, too:

Swatches mode

The user can pick from one of a few hundred color variants.

HSB mode

This one’s my favorite. The user picks one of Hue, Saturation, or Brightness to be nailed down; by adjusting another by slider, there is a huge range of different pixel values to choose from, by clicking (or, more fun, dragging) in the central area. See Figure 13-9.

RGB mode

The user picks Red, Green, and Blue components by sliders.

Figure 13-9. JColorChooser: HSB view in action

Example 13-5 contains a short program that makes it happen.

Example 13-5. JColorDemo.java

import com.darwinsys.util.*; import javax.swing.*; import java.awt.*; import java.awt.event.*; /* * Colors - demo of Swing JColorChooser. * Swing's JColorChooser ...