Displaying a message by right-clicking a GUI button

[Michael Payte]

I'm trying to make it so that my application will display a message by right-clicking a button (the message must be displayed where the right-click event is detected). However, when I right-click on the buttons, nothing happens. Help would be appreciated; thank you in advance! Here is my complete code (130-163 contains the mouse listener code. mousePressed, mouseEntered, mouseReleased, and mouseExited are intentionally left empty):

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.*;

public class program4 extends JApplet{
 

  private JButton leftButton, rightButton;

  private JMenuItem jmiGreen, jmiBlue, jmiRed, jmiYellow, jmiMagenta, jmiPink;
 
  int i = 1;
  
  public program4() {
    
    JMenuBar jmb = new JMenuBar();

    setJMenuBar(jmb);
	 
	 addMouseListener(new MyMouseListener());
	 
    JMenu operationMenu = new JMenu("Colors");
    operationMenu.setMnemonic('C');
    jmb.add(operationMenu);

    operationMenu.add(jmiGreen= new JMenuItem("Green", 'G'));
    operationMenu.add(jmiBlue = new JMenuItem("Blue", 'B'));
    operationMenu.add(jmiRed = new JMenuItem("Red", 'R'));
    operationMenu.add(jmiYellow = new JMenuItem("Yellow", 'Y'));
    operationMenu.add(jmiMagenta = new JMenuItem("Magenta", 'M'));
    operationMenu.add(jmiPink = new JMenuItem("Pink", 'P'));

    JPanel p2 = new JPanel(new FlowLayout());
	 
    p2.add(leftButton = new JButton(""));
    p2.add(rightButton = new JButton(""));
 	 leftButton.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(100, 50));
	 rightButton.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(100, 50));
    leftButton.setBackground(Color.green);
	 rightButton.setBackground(Color.green);
	 
	 
	 
	
	 	
	 	leftButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
      	public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) 
			{
			 	if(i == 0)
			 	{
   				leftButton.setBackground(Color.green); 
					i++;   
		    	}	
			 	else if(i == 1)
			 	{
   				leftButton.setBackground(Color.blue); 
					i++;   
		    	}
			 	else if(i == 2)
			 	{
					leftButton.setBackground(Color.red);
					i++; 
			 	}
			 	else if(i == 3)
			 	{
					leftButton.setBackground(Color.yellow);  
					i++; 
			 	}
			 	else if(i == 4)
			 	{
					leftButton.setBackground(Color.magenta);   
					i++;
			 	}
				else if(i == 5)
			 	{
					leftButton.setBackground(Color.pink);
					i = 0;   
			 	}
      	}
    	});
		
		rightButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
      	public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) 
			{
				rightButton.setBackground(Color.green);   
      	}
    	});
		
    setLayout(new BorderLayout());
    add(p2, BorderLayout.CENTER);

    jmiGreen.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
      public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        rightButton.setBackground(Color.green);    
      }
    });
    jmiBlue.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
      public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        rightButton.setBackground(Color.blue);
      }
    });
    jmiRed.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
      public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        rightButton.setBackground(Color.red);
      }
    });
    jmiYellow.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
      public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        rightButton.setBackground(Color.yellow);
      }
    });
	 jmiMagenta.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
      public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        rightButton.setBackground(Color.magenta);
      }
    });
	 jmiPink.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
      public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        rightButton.setBackground(Color.pink);
      }
    });
	 
	 Color selectedColor;
	 selectedColor = JColorChooser.showDialog
               (null, "Select a Background Color", Color.GRAY);
	 p2.setBackground(selectedColor);
	 
  }

public class MyMouseListener implements MouseListener 
{ 
  	public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) 
  	{
     
  	}
 
  	public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent e) 
  	{
     
  	}
	
  public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) 
  {
     
  }
  
  public void mouseExited(MouseEvent e) 
  {
      
  }

  public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) 
  { 
	
		if (e.getButton() == MouseEvent.BUTTON2) 
		{ 

			leftButton.setToolTipText("100");
			rightButton.setToolTipText("200");

		}   
  } 
} 

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    program4 applet = new program4();
    JFrame frame = new JFrame();
    frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(3);
    frame.setTitle("GUI Practice");
    frame.getContentPane().add(applet, BorderLayout.CENTER);
    applet.init();
    applet.start();
    frame.setSize(400,320);
    frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
    frame.setVisible(true);
  }
}

[Campbell Ritchie]

I would suggest those colours should be chosen from an array.
something.setColor(myColourArray[i++ % myColourArray.length]);
That will of course go horribly wrong if … this happens.

You may possibly have seen that message before; it was in response to some code surprisingly similar to yours.

Go through the Java Tutorials about events. An action event does not depend on a mouse key, but on the GUI button being pushed. Try going through the ActionEvents which are associated with that action, and see whether you get different mask numbers from it. If you read about ActionEvent you see you can get different numbers from it. See whether you get something like ALT_MASK or META_MASK from the event. Note if those are masks, the easiest way to check for them is this sort of thing, which you can try for right middle and left buttons:-

if ((myEvent.getModifiers() & ActionEvent.ALT_MASK) != 0)
{
   System.out.println("ALT_MASK found"):
}

You can tell whether the numbers are used as masks; they will be something like 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and you can find that from the constant values link.

If that doesn’t help, try coming back and considering a mouse event.

If you can work out which mask number is used, you can change the appropriate if to show your dropdown list.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Moving discussion to our GUIs forum.

[Campbell Ritchie]

By the way, if that program is an applet rather than a frame. shouldn’t the code go in the init and paint methods rather than the constructor? I haven’t written applets for ages, so I can’t remember, but that doesn’t look right to me.

[Michael Dunn]

> display a message by right-clicking a button

MouseEvent.BUTTON2 is the scroll button (if the mouse has one)

[Michael Payte]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:By the way, if that program is an applet rather than a frame. shouldn’t the code go in the init and paint methods rather than the constructor? I haven’t written applets for ages, so I can’t remember, but that doesn’t look right to me.

Actually, I will be changing the JApplet to JFrame. I just haven't done that yet.

[Campbell Ritchie]

It would be all right inside a frame, yes.

But have you worked out how to detect the right button yet?