JDialog (non-modal) always on top

[Duane Riech]

Is there a way to force a JDialog (non-modal) to always be on top??
Thanks,

[Joe Ess]

Wouldn't that, by definition, be a modal dialog?

[Gregg Bolinger]

I think what he is referring to is needing to have a Window open that is always on top, but you still have access to the other Windows.
I don't believe there is really a way to do this with JFrames/JDialogs without attachting a focus listener on the JDialog and when it loses focus, move it to the front of all the other windows. This will cause flickering and works pretty horribly.
I don't know the requirements of your application, but if you could make it an MDI app, JInternalFrames are able to be put on the Palette Layer of a JDesktopPane which will give you the results you want. Just not in a Window outside of the main app.

[Joe Ess]

Originally posted by Gregg Bolinger:
I think what he is referring to is needing to have a Window open that is always on top, but you still have access to the other Windows.

You do a better job at reading into requirements than I. Your suggestion of an MDI app reminds me of a trick I used trying to simulate modal dialogs on an JApplet (there was something funky with JApplets and modal dialogs I guess. . .). Add an InternalFrame to the GlassPane rather than the ContentPane of a JApplet (applies to JFrame or JWindow as well). Set the GlassPane as a mouse listener and it intercepts any attempt to access the components on a ContentPane. The effect is that of a modal dialog within the application. When the dilaog is closed, remove the mouse listener from the GlassPane and clicks will be available to the ContentPane components. Maybe that's another option.

[Duane Riech]

The reason for the question was in reference to a drag and drop
implementation from a JTable to a JDialog. Since the JDialog would
be covered once the dragsource was clicked on, I wanted a way to
force the JDialog to stay on top as the dragTarget.
I implemented a "class ComponentEvent extends ComponentAdapter"
and included the componentHidden() method to trap hidding the JDialog
and included the addComponentListener(new ComponentEvent()); line in
the JDialog public constructor. I wanted to make a call to toFront(),
but I'm not trapping the Hidden event for some reason.

Either way, I'm sure there's another way of dealing with the issue.
Thanks for the responses.