HELP!!! How to create a modal JPanel

Question

Hi
I've been creating an applet that uses transparent JPanels to draw boxes that look like windows.
I'm in need, now, to create one that asks for user input (ie "click the OK button") and that blocks the current thread and other panels until the user has answered.
It's totally similar to a windows message box.
How do i do it????
I've been taking examples from this tech tip (http://java.sun.com/developer/JDCTechTips/2001/tt1220.html) that explains almost everything (but uses JInternalFrame), and also 2 ways of doing the thread-blocking work:
One way uses a worker thread to compose the UI and wait() while the java dispatcher thread does the app events (action, paint) and notifyAll() when the user presses "OK".
In the other way, the author copied the code from EventQueue's dispatchEvent() and created a dispatcher thread into the modal JFrame, so that events could be processed without having to use another thread.
I think this last method is a hack because of portabilityu issues, for example code in my dispatchEvent() (JRE1.6.0) contains more checks and cases than the code he postet in that page.
I think I would have problem running similar code on a previous or future version of the JRE.
Anyway I haven't succeeded yet to wake up the waiting thread when the user has clicked OK. The notifyAll method executes, no exception is thrown, but the other thread remains asleep.
Here's my code (note the "synchronized" keywords)
synchronized public int show(String title, String message, int buttons, boolean isError) {
        if (isError)
            jptBox = new TLPanel(title, new Color(104,10,11), new Color(234,30,34), new Color(241,79,83));
        else
            jptBox = new TLPanel(title, new Color(6,29,108), new Color(80,103,184), new Color(120,138,200));
        jptBox.setBounds(TLStartup.centerSize(400, 100));
        btn1 = new JButton("OK");
        btn1.setBounds(180, 75, 40, 20);
        btn1.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
            public synchronized void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
                this.notify();
        jptBox.add(btn1);
        cnt.add(jptBox);
        cnt.setComponentZOrder(jptBox, 0);
        try {
            this.wait();
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            System.out.println(ex.toString());
        return MB_ANSWER_YES;
    }

Answer 1

I put a boolean variable test=true into my class, and modified the code to check it into the waiting cycle:
        try {
            while (test)
                this.wait(1000);
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            System.out.println(ex.toString());
        }and to reset it into the actionPerformed:
        btn1.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
            public synchronized void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
                test = false;
                this.notifyAll();
        });And HOW COME it does work now ??? (with some delay)