Swing

[Rakesh Rajagopalan]

How to use the 'Grid Bag Layout'? Can anyone give me some sample program on that?

[Michael Dunn]

> How to use the 'Grid Bag Layout'?

lots of experimentation, trial and error, late nights, coffee, whisky, v_alium.

start with sun's tutorial
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/layout/gridbag.html

there are better ones via google, but I've yet to come across one that explains it easily.

[edit] v_alium is censored??, learn something every day
[ September 20, 2006: Message edited by: Michael Dunn ]

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Be sure to watch this training video.

[Khaled Mahmoud]

Here is a very great tool that will make you understand the GridBagLayout thoroughly

This is a free tool and i have uploaded it to rapidshare
Hope it works fine

http://rapidshare.de/files/33844333/gridbag.zip

[Campbell Ritchie]

This comes up regularly on these fora.
The hard part to understand about GridBag is not the layout, but the constraints. The constraints are:

gridX which means column, starting with 0=left, and

gridY which means row, 0=top,

gridwidth, how many columns covered

gridheight, how many rows etc.

weightx, how much it expands left-to-right,

weighty ditto up and down

anchor, which if any side or corner of its space the component clings to

fill, whether it fills its space horizontally, vertically, or both ways

Insets, an object representing the spacing from the edge of its area

ipadx, internal padding between the spaces left-to-right (I think) and last but not least,

ipady, ditto up and down.

Now if you use GridBagConstraints, you have to write myConstraints.gridx = 123;
myConstraints.gridy = 234; every time you add a Component. So your consstraints takes up as much space as the rest of the coding. Find a copy of Horstmann & Cornell's book
C Horstmann, G Cornell, Core Java 2, 7/e, Vol I-Fundamentals, Santa Clara CA: Sun Microsystems Press (Prentice-Hall) (2004), pages 430ff. Find the class they call GBC.
You can now add things like this:-

setLayout(new GridBagLayout();
. . .
add(myButton, new GBC(0, 0, 1, 2).setWeights(100, 100).setAnchor(GBC.WEST).setFill(GBC.HORIZONTAL);

You can download a copy of the GBC class from Horstmann and Cornell here.
And I like the tool which Khaled Mahmoud quoted.