Swing Interfaces with Sorting and Searching - Java Programming: Comprehensive Concepts and Techniques - page 441

Swing Container Hierarchy
The container hierarchy for any window or applet that includes Swing
components must have a Swing top-level container rather than an AWT
container. A top-level container , also called a root container is an object at
the top of the container hierarchy that displays a border and title bar. For
example, a main window should be implemented as a JFrame instance rather
than as a Frame instance if the main window will contain Swing components.
Table 7-5 displays the container hierarchy. Containers exist in both AWT and
Swing packages, but they play a more important role in Swing applications.

Table 7-5 The Swing Container Hierarchy
TYPE OF CONTAINER PURPOSE SWING EXAMPLE

Top-Level Containers The components at the top of any JApplet

Swing containment hierarchy JDialog

JFrame

General-Purpose Intermediate containers that can be JPanel

Containers used to display components JScrollPane

JSplitPane
JToolbar
JTabbedPane

Special-Purpose Intermediate containers that play content pane

Containers specific roles in the user interface, JLayeredPane

such as layered panes or internal JInternalPane

panes JDesktopPane

Basic Controls Low-level components that exist JButton

primarily to get input from the user JComboBox

JList
JMenu
JSlider
JSpinner
JTextField

Uneditable Low-level components that exist JLabel

Information Displays solely to give the user information JProgressBar

JToolTip

Interactive Displays of Low-level components that display JColorChooser

Highly Formatted highly formatted information that JFileChooser

Information may be modified by the user JTable

JText
JTree

Low-level components, also called atomic components , can stand alone in
the interface or be added to a higher level component in the hierarchy; however,
programmers should not add components directly to a top-level container, such as
a JFrame. The preferred method is to use a special-purpose container to hold com-
ponents, called a content pane . The getContentPane() method is used to create
an instance of the Container class, similar to a Panel, which does not display a bor-
der. Content panes hold individual components and are added to, and therefore
contained by, the JFrame. Programs that use a content pane extend JFrame and use
add() methods to add components to the instance of the content pane.