The JDesktopPane Class
JDesktopPane is an
extension of JLayeredPane, which uses
a DesktopManager to control the
placement and movement of frames. Figure
9-3 shows what JDesktopPane
looks like in several L&Fs. Like its superclass, JLayeredPane has a null layout manager. Components added to it
must be placed at absolute locations with absolute sizes because it is
intended to house JInternalFrames,
which rely on the user to determine their placement.

Figure 9-3. JDesktopPanes in four L&Fs
Another reason for using JDesktopPane is to allow pop-up dialog boxes
to be displayed using JInternalFrames. This is discussed in detail
in the next chapter.
Properties
Table 9-4 shows the
properties defined by JDesktopPane.
The allFrames property provides access to all JInternalFrames contained by the desktop.
The desktopManager property holds the DesktopManager object supplied by the pane’s
L&F. (We’ll cover the responsibilities of the DesktopManager in the next section.) The
opaque property defaults to true for JDesktopPanes, and isOpaque( ) is overridden so that it always
returns true. UI contains the DesktopPaneUI implementation, and UIClassID contains the class ID for JDesktopPane.
Table 9-4. JDesktopPane properties
Property | Data type | get | is | set | Default value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | · | | ||
| | · | Empty array | ||
|
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