Designing Graphical Interfaces - Beginning Java Programming: The Object-Oriented Approach - page 468

(continued)

cl ass used as looks like

JComponent component =
new JTextField("Text field");

JTextField

JComponent component =
new JTextArea("Text area");

JTextArea

JComponent component =
new JComboBox<String>(
new String[]{
"---1---",
"---2---"
});

JComboBox

JComponent component =
new JCheckBox("Check boxes");

JCheckBox

JRadioButton JComponent component =
new JRadioButton(
"And radio buttons");

Apart from components, there is also a second GUI element you should be aware of, called a “con-
tainer.” Containers hold components together in a specific layout and can also contain sub‐contain-
ers. Therefore, a container can be seen as a special kind of component that holds other components
and organizes them in a specific manner.

You should be aware of the following Swing container classes: JApplet , JFrame , JDialog , JWindow ,
and JPanel ; all of them are derived from the AWT java.awt.Container class (which is subclassed
in a number of AWT containers you can ignore, as you will only be using the Swing ones). You're
probably getting anxious to start coding by now, so why not introduce one of the containers by
means of a Try It Out?

Writing Your First GUI application

try it out

In this Try It Out, you will construct a simple GUI application using the JFrame container class.
1.

As always, feel free to create a new project in Eclipse.

2.

Create a class called MyFirstFrame with the following content:
import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Color;

import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JPanel;

public class MyFirstFrame {
public static void main(String[] args) {
JFrame frame new JFrame();