Design of JPanel

[Martin Vietor]

Hello again,

I have two JPanels (GridLayouts), one has 15 JCheckBoxes, the other 13. Both have a JButton at the Bottom. I would like the CheckBoxes in each JPanel to be at the same Height (just looks prettier) and both Buttons at the very Bottom. I have achieved this by

 
myJPanel.add(new JLabel(" ");
 

Pragmatic. Not very elegant. Is there a way? GridBagLayout and then set GridBagConstraints for the CheckBoxes and the Button to spread them out? Seems awfully complicated. Is there some really cool and easy way to do it that I can't think of?

Thanks, Martin

[Michael Dunn]

if you reasonably competent at GridBagLayout, you would have been using it,
which means it will only cause you grief (like most of the rest of us).

you could nest a few panels of differing layoutManagers to achieve the same effect.

the easiest way is what you have done.

[Brian Cole]

Originally posted by Martin Vietor:
Hello again,

I have two JPanels (GridLayouts), one has 15 JCheckBoxes, the other 13. Both have a JButton at the Bottom. I would like the CheckBoxes in each JPanel to be at the same Height (just looks prettier) and both Buttons at the very Bottom. I have achieved this by

 
myJPanel.add(new JLabel(" ");
 

Pragmatic. Not very elegant. Is there a way?

Well you can leave the string out and just do new JLabel(), or you can use something like Box.createHorizontalStrut(0).

If you don't like using components as spacers, you can put the GridLayout panel in NORTH of a BorderLayout and put the buttons in a SOUTH panel. That's probably what I would have done.

You mention GridBagLayout. While that should work, I wouldn't recommend it.

[Martin Vietor]

Interesting. I thought GridBagLayout was what all the hip kids use and Border-, Flow-, or somesuch was for us newbies Most of my layout uses GridBag, too many Panels of different size that get stretched into funny shapes otherwise. Is there an actual reason against GridBag or is it just too complicated if not used on a regular basis?

Martin

[Michael Dunn]

> Is there an actual reason against GridBag or is it just too complicated if not used on a regular basis?

I find it very frustrating - fix one thing (via changing a constraint), and 2 more things break.
sometimes it feels like I'm just going around in circles trying to get GBL to work,
in the end, far easier to nest a couple of panels with other layouts.