Latest News from Phil Herold

TableLayout: Replace Your GridBag Layout Code

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 19:00:00 EST

In this month's article I introduce TableLayout, a robust but easy-to-use LayoutManager for use in any Java Swing application. It's based very loosely on the HTML TABLE paradigm, where components are placed in table cells in row-major order. Vertical and horizontal alignment for the component in a cell can be specified, and a component (cell) may span rows and columns. I also present Forms-Panel, a JPanel sub-class that abstracts the underlying TableLayout.

List-Based UI Framework For Your Swing Applications

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 14:00:00 EST

In this month's article I continue my discussion of a list-based UI framework that I started last month ('ArrayListModel,' [JDJ, Vol. 10, issue 10]). The primary concept behind this idea is a data model that contains elements that describe parts of an application's user interface. Through a single model, various aspects of the user interface can be controlled, manipulated, and visually synchronized. There is a lot of interesting code that accompanies this article, so I encourage you to download it and check it out. Let's get started.

ArrayListModel with Swing's JList and JComboBox

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 10:00:00 EST

This article presents a data model based on a Collection implementation that can be used with Swing components JList and JComboBox. It also discusses a method to use these same concepts in constructing the user interface of an application.

FrameResizer

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 11:00:00 EDT

This article presents a Java/Swing component implementation of a feature that is ubiquitous in nearly all desktop applications, particularly Windows applications - an area in the lower right portion of a window (Frame) that can be used to resize the window.