I created a drawing application that lets a user choose pen colors but I have having trouble with the layout. I created multiple panels but when I run it, all the buttons are still in one panel. Is there a way to fix this?
public class DrawingGUI extends JPanel {
private JRadioButton penColor1, penColor2, penColor3, randomPenColor, eraser;
private JButton clearButton;
private static Color defaultColor = Color.BLACK;
private static boolean isRandomSelected = false;
private final static int DIAMETER = 12;
protected static boolean canDraw;
private ArrayList<PointTracker> points;
public DrawingGUI() {
setBackground(Color.WHITE);
points = new ArrayList<PointTracker>();
JPanel drawPanel = new JPanel();
JLabel instructions = new JLabel("Enter your information:");
JPanel instructionsPanel = new JPanel();
instructionsPanel.add(instructions);
drawPanel.add(instructionsPanel);
JPanel colorPanel1 = new JPanel();
penColor1 = new JRadioButton("Red");
drawPanel.add(penColor1);
penColor1.addActionListener(new ToolListener());
drawPanel.add(colorPanel1);
JPanel colorPanel2 = new JPanel();
penColor2 = new JRadioButton("Blue");
drawPanel.add(penColor2);
penColor2.addActionListener(new ToolListener());
drawPanel.add(colorPanel2);
JPanel colorPanel3 = new JPanel();
penColor3 = new JRadioButton("Yellow");
drawPanel.add(penColor3);
penColor3.addActionListener(new ToolListener());
drawPanel.add(colorPanel3);...(So on)
all the buttons are still in one panel
Why is that a problem. That is what I would expect to happen.
Why are you creating a separate panel for each button? The whole point of using panel is to logically group components.
So I would expect you should have something like:
JPanel buttonsPanel = new JPanel();
buttonsPanel.add( button1 );
buttonsPanel.add( button2 );
buttonsPanel.add( button3 );
JPanel drawPanel = new JPanel();
drawPanel.add( component1 );
drawPanel.add( component2 );
frame.add(drawPanel, BorderLayout.PAGE_START);
frame.add(buttonsPanel, BorderLayout.PAGE_END);
Above is a simple example of "nesting" two panels on a frame. Each of the panel can use a different layout manager as required.
For a working example of this approach you can check out Custom Painting Approaches. Both code examples show how you can "nest" a drawing panel and a buttons panel in a frame.