Laying Out Components Within a Container |
Here's an applet that shows aGridBagLayout
in action.
This is a picture of the applet's GUI. To run the applet, click the picture. The applet will appear in a new browser window.If you enlarge the window as shown above, you'll notice that the bottom row, which contains Button 5, gets all the new vertical space. The new horizontal space is split evenly among all the columns. This resizing behavior is based on weights the program assigns to individual components in the
GridBagLayout
is the most flexible -- and complex -- layout manager the Java platform provides. AGridBagLayout
places components in a grid of rows and columns, allowing specified components to span multiple rows or columns. Not all rows necessarily have the same height. Similarly, not all columns necessarily have the same width. Essentially,GridBagLayout
places components in rectangles (cells) in a grid, and then uses the components' preferred sizes to determine how big the cells should be.GridBagLayout
. You'll also notice that each component takes up all the available horizontal space. This behavior is also specified by the program.The way the program specifies the size and position characteristics of its components is by specifying constraints for each component, To specify constraints, you set instance variables in a
GridBagConstraints
object and tell theGridBagLayout
(with thesetConstraints
method) to associate the constraints with the component.The following pages explain the constraints you can set and provide examples.
Specifying Constraints
This page tells you what instance variablesGridBagConstraints
has, what values you can set them to, and how to associate the resultingGridBagConstraints
with a component.The Example Explained
This page puts it all together, explaining the code for the program on this page.Examples that Use GridBagLayout
You can find examples of usingGridBagLayout
throughout this tutorial. The follwing table lists a few.
Example Where Described Notes GridBagWindow.java
This page Uses many features -- weights, insets, internal padding, horizontal fill, exact cell positioning, multi-column cells, and anchoring (component positioning within a cell). TextSamplerDemo.java
Using Swing's Text Components Aligns two pairs of labels and text fields, plus adds a label across the full width of the container. ContainerEventDemo.java
How to Write a Container listener Positions five components within a container, using weights, fill, and relative positioning.
Laying Out Components Within a Container |