Using AWT Controls, Layout Managers, and Menus

CHAPTER 26

Using AWT Controls, Layout Managers, and Menus

This chapter continues our overview of the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT). It begins with a look at several of the AWT’s controls and layout managers. It then discusses menus and the menu bar. The chapter also includes a discussion of two high-level components: the dialog box and the file dialog box. It concludes with another look at event handling.

Controls are components that allow a user to interact with your application in various ways—for example, a commonly used control is the push button. A layout manager automatically positions components within a container. Thus, the appearance of a window is determined by a combination of the controls that it contains and the layout manager used to position them. In addition to the controls, a frame window can also include a standard-style menu bar.

Each entry in a menu bar activates a drop-down menu of options from which the user can choose. This constitutes the main menu of an application. As a general rule, a menu bar is positioned at the top of a window. Although different in appearance, menu bars are handled in much the same way as are the other controls.

While it is possible to manually position components within a window, doing so is quite tedious. The layout manager automates this task. For the first part of this chapter, which introduces various controls, the default layout manager will be used. This displays components in a container using left-to-right, top-to-bottom organization. Once the controls have been covered, several layout managers will be examined. There, you will see ways to better manage the positioning of controls.

Before continuing, it is important to emphasize that today you will seldom create GUIs based solely on the AWT because more powerful GUI frameworks (Swing and JavaFX) have been developed for Java. However, the material presented here remains important for the following reasons. First, much of the information and many of the techniques related to controls and event handling are generalizable to the other Java GUI frameworks. (As mentioned in the previous chapter, Swing is built upon the AWT.) Second, the layout managers described here can also be used by Swing. Third, for some small applications, the AWT components might be the appropriate choice. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you may need to maintain or upgrade legacy code that uses the AWT. Therefore, a basic understanding of the AWT is important for all Java programmers.