Thanks for your reply!
I think you may be right, inevitably I will have to create my own renderer. But I have been studying some other windows based list components that behave differently. Just as a JButton will have an outline drawn around its edge when it receives focus, so should the JList's first cell (the yellow cell border may vary depending on L&F). All of the list examples I've seen coded outside of
Java exhibit this behavior. It leads me to believe that it is either a bug or I am missing something....correct me if I'm wrong.
Thanks,
Travis