>I don't see why a CardLayout card could not have nine buttons
>on it. Could anyone please explain?
The API says...
A CardLayout object is a layout manager for a container. It treats each component in the container as a card. Only one card is visible at a time, and the container acts as a stack of
cards. The first component added to a CardLayout object is the visible component when the container is first displayed.
First button isn�t a container so you can add a button directly to a CardLayout. Second a CardLayout show one element at a time (like a Tabbed Panel, when you select Tools-Options in
Word!) and this element must be a Container like Panel, then, in that Panel you can specify a FlowLayout for placing the 9 buttons.