Quick question about JPanels. Are the coordinates of a JPanel laid out left-to-right and up-to-down? In other words, are smaller X-coordinates to the left of a component and are smaller Y-coordinates towards the top of a component?
Yes, and not just in JPanels. This coordinate system, with (0,0) being the top-left corner, is used in all of AWT and Swing. It's also used to place windows (JFrame, JDialog, etc) on the desktop.