Java Foundation Classes in a Nutshell

commonly used feature of JRootPane, however, is that it displays a JMenuBar

passed to its setJMenuBar() method. (In AWT, you specify a MenuBar for a Frame

by calling the setMenuBar() method of Frame.)

Layout Management

Some containers, such as JTabbedPane and JSplitPane, define a particular

arrangement for their children. Other containers such as

JPanel (and JFrame, JDi-

alog

, and other top-level containers that use JPanel as their default content pane)

do not define any particular arrangement. When working with containers of this

type, you must specify a

LayoutManager object to arrange the children within the

container.

AWT and Swing include various implementations of the

java.awt.LayoutManager

inter face. Each arranges components in a differ ent way. Table 2-5 lists the layout

managers defined by AWT. Swing applications often rely on these AWT layout

managers, but Swing also defines some of its own, which are listed in Table 2-6.

Figur e 2-2 shows how some of these layout managers arrange their children.

Table 2−5: AWT Layout Managers

Layout Manager Description

BorderLayout Lays out a maximum of five components: one along each of

the four borders of the container and one in the center. When

using this layout manager, you must add components to the

container using a two-argument version of the

add() method.

The constraint argument should be one of the strings “North”,

“East”, “South”, “West”, or “Center”. ...