Some clarification about Swing

[guyafe]

Hi all,
I am new to Swing and GUI generally, and need some clarifications.
I want to have a single GUI window which have several components (Still don't handle the semantics of GUI completely): Video player, log window, several buttons, etc.
After a lot of googling, I understood that I need to create a JFrame which is the root of that window and than a JPanel to insert to that frame, and finally insert all the components to that panel and not to that frame.
My question is why can't I insert components to a JFrame? Isn't it a little bit OH to have a panel in the middle?

Thanks
Guy

[keang]

Actually in swing you can just insert your components into the JFrame because it comes with a default JPanel. However it is normal practice to add you components to your own panel and add that panel to the frame.

A lot of people, when developing a GUI, have their GUI class extend JFrame. This is generally not the best approach, you should subclass JPanel instead. The minor disadvantage of extending JPanel is you need a write a little more code to create a window (eg JFrame, JDialog etc) to put your panel into but the advantage is you haven't tied your GUI to a JFrame. For example, if in the future you decide you could use this panel elsewhere but it needs to be in a JDialog then if you have sub-classed JPanel this isn't a problem. Or if you want to embed your panel in a window containing other panel again not a problem.

[guyafe]

Thanks,
So what I have done so far is to have a main GUI object (Nothing to so with main function), that encapsulates a JFrame, and in to it I insert a JPanel that includes all my components.
Actually this GUI object creates all components such as the player, panel, etc. and inserts all of them to the frame.

Is it a good design?

[keang]

It's hard to say without seeing the full design but it sounds reasonable.

[guyafe]

Thanks,
My main issue was separate the main GUI Thread (The one that is invoked), and let it have already prepared contents.

Lets hope it will work well