Scribd
Upload
331 views

Java Swing

Swing components have more functionality than AWT components. Swing components are lightweight and don't require their own operating system windows, using fewer system resources than heavyweight AWT components. The root pane of a Swing container virtually contains the content pane, layered pane, glass pane, and optional menu bar. The layered pane divides the depth range into layers like default, palette, modal, popup, and drag to control overlapping.

Uploaded by

riteshyaaraa
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
331 views

Java Swing

Swing components have more functionality than AWT components. Swing components are lightweight and don't require their own operating system windows, using fewer system resources than heavyweight AWT components. The root pane of a Swing container virtually contains the content pane, layered pane, glass pane, and optional menu bar. The layered pane divides the depth range into layers like default, palette, modal, popup, and drag to control overlapping.

Uploaded by

riteshyaaraa
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 7

Java Swing

Comparison between Swing and AWT


Swing components have more functionality than AWT components Swing buttons and labels can display images in addition to text One can easily change or add the borders drawn around most of swing components Swing components dont have to be rectangular. Buttons for eg can be round Assertive technologies such as screen readers can easily get information from swing components. For eg, a tool can easily get the text thats displayed on a button or label Swing lets you specify which look and feel your program's GUI uses. By contrast, AWT components always have the look and feel of the native platform.

Java Swing
Why couldn't all the enhancements and new components simply be added to AWT?
Each AWT component gets its own operating platform window. In extended programs, a large number of such windows slows performance uses up a great deal of memory. Such components are called heavyweight components. Swing controls, on the other hand, are simply drawn as images in their containers and dont have a platform window of their own at all, so they use fewer system resources. Therefore, they are called lightweight components. However not all swing components are lightweight. To display anything in a windowed environment, some operating system windows are needed, if only in which to draw lightweight controls. For this reason, Swing supports these heavyweight classes: JFrame, JDialog, JWindow & JApplet

Swing Basic Containers


Components are:
The content pane The layered pane The glass pane An optional menu bar

In addition to this, the root pane (shown in figure below) is virtual container that contains the content pane, the layered pane, the glass pane and the menu bar
Frame Content Layer Menu bar Layered Pane

Content Pane

Glass Pane

Content Pane
Content Pane actually sits on one of the layers of the layered pane. A layered pane contains several layers meant for displaying Swing components, depending on their overlapping requirements. The menu Bar and the content pane sit on the Frame_Content_Layer

Frame Content Layer

Menu bar Layered Pane

Content Pane

Glass Pane

Glass Pane
The glass pane is a member of the root pane that is used to draw over an area that already contains some components. A glass pane can also be used to catch mouse events because it sits over the top of the content pane and menu bar.

Because glass pane is a member of the root pane, it already exists in a Swing container.
However the glass pane is not visible by default.

Menu Bars
The menu bars are added to the menu bar area, which is a thin rectangular area along the upper edge of the frame content pane layer of the layered pane. The remaining area of the thin layer is filled with the content pane.

To obtain a reference to the optional menu bar that exists with a Swing frame, the method getMenuBar() on the container object can be called.

Layered Pane
A layered pane object is represented by the Swing class JLayeredPane, which extends JComponent. The class is stored in the package javax.swing For convenience, JlayeredPane divides the depth range into several different layers. Putting a component into one of these layers ensures that components overlap properly.
DEFAULT_LAYER: The standard, bottommost layer, where most components go. PALETTE_LAYER: The palette layer sits over the default layer and is useful for
floating toolbars and palettes.

MODAL_LAYER: The layer used for modal dialog boxes. POPUP_LAYER: The pop-up layer displays above the dialog area. DRAG_LAYER: When a component is dragged, assigning it to a drag layer makes
sure its positioned over all the other components in the container.

You might also like