JFrame resizing -- what is normal behavior?

[Glenn Lasseigne]

Hi,

If I instantiate a JFrame that is about 60% of the screen and do nothing else, the content pane is nothing more than the CENTER of a BorderLayout set to default background color. Now, if I QUICKLY resize the window, I can observe black areas which are then filled with background color as appropriate. If I add more items to the BorderLayout (say 12 JButtons), the black areas are observable for longer periods of time, as it seems to take longer for the layout to do its job. I am running this on a new computer/monitor so there should be no issues there. Is this normal?

I ask because when I then use a JXPanel, the situation gets MUCH worse as the JXPanel changes the Repaint Manager.

Thanks in advance,

Glenn

[Rob Camick]

Post your SSCCE that demonstrates the problem. Then we can determine if the problem is with your code or Swing repainting.

[pete stein]

I think that it's a general Swing issue. I've seen it in my Swing applications on Windows Vista, though thankfully barely noticeable.

[Glenn Lasseigne]

Thanks for the replies.

I have been doing some investigations and would like to report my results and ask for
comments. Below is a very simple program involving a JFrame, a BorderLayout, and a bunch
of buttons. Nothing is rocket science, and one would suspect that everything should work
as expected. But, it doesn't. My eventual problem involves using a JXPanel and some horrendous
repaint behavior. I have not been able to reproduce this behavior in a small postable program yet,
but I believe it is related to the behavior below. The repainting behavior involving the JXPanel is
highly system dependent. I will post about this later.

I have tried the program on the following systems:
1) My home desktop running Windows 7.
a) This is a new computer (Dell) with very good monitor and graphics card (Not gaming).
2) My office computer running XP Professional
3) Dell laptop running Vista
4) Sony laptop running XP (four years old)

The steps that I take are the following:
1) Run the program
a) A small JFrame appears in the upper left corner of the screen.
2) Use the mouse to grab the lower right corner of the JFrame.
3) QUICKLY resize the JFrame to almost full size of the screen.
4) Observe repaint behavior.
5) In all cases, the final layout is correct!

The results are as follows:
1) On the Windows 7 machine
a) The new border of the JFrame is evident at the new position.
b) The space between the new border and the original layout is filled with black.
c) The layout "snaps" to the final position.
d) The "snapping" is delayed if a more complicated layout is used.

2) On the XP Professional machine
a) Behoviour is as expected -- immediate resizing of JFrame and layout
b) On more complicated layout, behavior is as below but "less".

3) On laptops (it is hard to resize quickly and screen size is smaller)
a) Multiple instances of the JFrame border in the intermediate positions are seen.
b) The area inbetween the original layout and the new border appear to be transparent
c) The final layout appears or "snaps" to new border.
d) Behavior is more pronounced on more complicated layout.

My analysis. The behavior seems to be the same except that Windows 7 erases the extra region between each
paint of the JFrame border rather than let it be transparent. Thus, you do not see the intermediate borders as
they have been erased.

I then performed the following experiment on the Windows 7 machine. All frames were reduced to a small size
and then quickly resized as above.
1) A Notepad frame - resizes nicely
2) An Opera browser frame -- Black areas are noticable as above.
3) An Eclipse IDE frame -- resizes nicely even though the layout is VERY complicated.
4) An Explorer browser -- resizes nicely except some black for one button (you would never notice if you weren't looking).


Questions:

What do the programs that don't show the visual artifacts of resizing do differently?
Why is their resizing continuous and mine and Opera's resizing "discrete"?

 
package fadingpanel.jxpaneltest;

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

public class JFrameWithButtonsTest {
	private int iScreen = 25;  
	private int iLocation = 10;
	JFrame frame = new JFrame();
	Container contentPane = frame.getContentPane();

	public JFrameWithButtonsTest() {

		JPanel northButtonPanel = new JPanel();
		northButtonPanel.setLayout(new GridLayout(2,2));
		northButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		northButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		northButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		northButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
 		contentPane.add(northButtonPanel, BorderLayout.NORTH);

		JPanel southButtonPanel = new JPanel();
		southButtonPanel.setLayout(new GridLayout(2,2));
		southButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		southButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		southButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		southButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		contentPane.add(southButtonPanel, BorderLayout.SOUTH);

		JPanel eastButtonPanel = new JPanel();
		eastButtonPanel.setLayout(new GridLayout(2,2));
		eastButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		eastButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		eastButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		eastButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		contentPane.add(eastButtonPanel, BorderLayout.EAST);

		boolean packFrame = false;
		frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
		Dimension screenSize = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize();
		Dimension frameSize = frame.getSize();
		frameSize.height = (int) (iScreen * screenSize.height / 100);
		frameSize.width = (int) (iScreen * screenSize.width / 100);
		frame.setSize(frameSize);
		frame.setLocation((screenSize.width - frameSize.width) / iLocation,
				(screenSize.height - frameSize.height) / iLocation);
		if (packFrame) {
			frame.pack();
			packFrame = true;
		} else {
			frame.validate();
		}
		frame.setVisible(true);
	}
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		try {
			UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());
		} catch (Exception e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
		javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
			public void run() {
				new JFrameWithButtonsTest();
			}
		});
	}
}

   

[Glenn Lasseigne]

Ok. There were no more comments, but in the meantime I (accidently) found out a few things and thought I would post what I have found

The black area found in the resizing results from translucency effects when using the Aero theme

For some reason, the translucency was temporarily disabled on my system, and the black areas disappeared and the resizing behavior was as on the other systems.

Can someone please comment on the behavior they get when resizing the JFrame when using the following code. I have
found the results to be system dependent. On my Windows 7 -- using Aero and just plain Windows7 -- I get lots and
lots of flicker. If I do not let go of the frame and just continue resizing, things get much worse and the flickering changes
to completely blank areas. Contrast with the code from the previous post. Thanks in advance

    
import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Component;
import java.awt.Container;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.Font;
import java.awt.GridLayout;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;

import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JLayeredPane;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.Timer;
import javax.swing.UIManager;

import org.jdesktop.swingx.JXPanel;

public class JFrameWithJXPanelTest {
	private int iScreen = 55;
	private int iLocation = 10;
	JLayeredPane layerPane = new FilledJLayeredPane();

	JFrame frame = new JFrame();
	Container contentPane = frame.getContentPane();

	public JFrameWithJXPanelTest() {

		final JXPanel jxp = new JXPanel();
		jxp.setLayout(new GridLayout());
		JLabel j2 = new JLabel(" I'm a JXPanel   ");
		j2.setFont(new Font("Bookman Old Style", 3, 35));
		j2.setBackground(Color.YELLOW);
		j2.setOpaque(true);
		jxp.add(j2);
		jxp.setAlpha(0.3f);
		jxp.setBorder(javax.swing.BorderFactory.createLineBorder(Color.BLACK,
				40));

		Timer fadeTimer = new Timer(45, new ActionListener() {
			public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent arg0) {
				jxp.setAlpha(1.0f);
			}
		});
		fadeTimer.setInitialDelay(5000);
		fadeTimer.setRepeats(false);
		fadeTimer.start();

		contentPane.add(jxp, BorderLayout.CENTER);

		JPanel northButtonPanel = new JPanel();
		northButtonPanel.setLayout(new GridLayout(2, 2));
		northButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		northButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		northButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		northButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		// northButtonPanel.setBackground(Color.DARK_GRAY);
		contentPane.add(northButtonPanel, BorderLayout.NORTH);
		JPanel southButtonPanel = new JPanel();
		southButtonPanel.setLayout(new GridLayout(2, 2));
		southButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		southButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		southButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		southButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		// northButtonPanel.setBackground(Color.DARK_GRAY);
		contentPane.add(southButtonPanel, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
		JPanel eastButtonPanel = new JPanel();
		eastButtonPanel.setLayout(new GridLayout(2, 2));
		eastButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		eastButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		eastButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));
		eastButtonPanel.add(new JButton(" I do nothing"));

		contentPane.add(eastButtonPanel, BorderLayout.EAST);

		/*
		 * Below is the code to intialize and show the JFrame.
		 */
		boolean packFrame = false;
		frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
		Dimension screenSize = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize();
		Dimension frameSize = frame.getSize();
		frameSize.height = (int) (iScreen * screenSize.height / 100);
		frameSize.width = (int) (iScreen * screenSize.width / 100);
		frame.setSize(frameSize);
		frame.setLocation((screenSize.width - frameSize.width) / iLocation,
				(screenSize.height - frameSize.height) / iLocation);
		if (packFrame) {
			frame.pack();
			packFrame = true;
		} else {
			frame.validate();
		}
		frame.setVisible(true);
	}

	/**
	 * @param args
	 */
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		try {
			UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());
		} catch (Exception e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
		javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
			public void run() {
				new JFrameWithJXPanelTest();
			}
		});
	}

	private class FilledJLayeredPane extends JLayeredPane {
		private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
		/**
		 * Layout each of the components in this JLayeredPane so that they all
		 * fill the entire extents of the layered pane -- from (0,0) to
		 * (getWidth(), getHeight())
		 * 
		 * from R Camick at CodeRanch
		 */
		@Override
		public void doLayout() {
			super.doLayout();
			// Synchronizing on getTreeLock, because I see other layouts doing
			// that.
			// see BorderLayout::layoutContainer(Container)
			synchronized (getTreeLock()) {
				int w = getWidth();
				int h = getHeight();
				for (Component c : getComponents()) {
					if (getLayer(c) == JLayeredPane.DEFAULT_LAYER) {
						c.setBounds(0, 0, w + 1, h + 1);
						c.doLayout();
					}
					if (getLayer(c) == JLayeredPane.PALETTE_LAYER) {
						c.setBounds(0, 0, w + 1, h + 1);
						c.doLayout();
					}
				}
	  		}
		}
	}
} 

[Michael Dunn]

> Ok. There were no more comments...

your first post (the one starting with package fadingpanel.jxpaneltest;)
ran OK for me, didn't matter how quickly I resized it. vista/java 1.6.0_20

the last post I cannot compile/run, I don't have the classes
import org.jdesktop.swingx.JXPanel;

not much point trying to do anything else with it, the problem might be JXPanel.

[Glenn Lasseigne]

> not much point trying to do anything else with it, the problem might be JXPanel.

That was pretty much my point. I didn't want to use JXPanel if it was not safe. I was
surprised to find so much system dependent behavior. It seems that Windows7 is doing
something different, and the designers of JXPanel did not see it coming.

I have designed a JXPanel like component using JXLayer and this seems to work. I
posted on the JXLayer forum on java.net for verification that the component is designed
OK. I am an advanced beginner at JAVA/OOP so I really am not sure about anything
that I do.

Thanks for your time and help.