JMenuItems drawn over by JPanel. How to fix?

Question

Hi.
When i add my menu to the frame the actual menu bar displays fine. but when you open the menu the items are drawn over by my jpanel.
I tried a way to work around it by adding the menu to the jpanel. when i did this the menu worked and displayed fine, but it wasn't really wanted (it wasn't being mounted to the top of the frame like the title bar, but instead a component centered on the canvas).
I want the menu bar to be positioned like any other gui application and use my jpanel for the drawing area. is there some way to let java know i want to display the menu over the jpanel?
Heres the basic structure of the code i'm using:
public class Simulate extends JApplet implements MouseMotionListener, MouseListener {
  static private JFrame frame;
  private Container content;
  private Display drawing_surface;
  private JMenuBar menu_bar;
  public static void main(String []args) {
    init_frame();
  public Simulate() {
      drawing_surface=new Display();
      setContentPane(drawing_surface);
      content=getContentPane();
      /* add menu items */
  static void init_frame() {
    frame=new JFrame();
    frame.getContentPane().add(new Simulate());
    frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    frame.setVisible(true);
class Display extends JPanel {
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
      paint_buffer(g);
  public void paint_buffer(Graphics g) {
  /* paint here */
}

Answer 1

Swing related questions should be posted in the Swing forum.
Read the Swing tutorial on [url http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/menu.html]How to Use Menus for a working example.
A JApplet is a top level container you don't add one top level container to another. See the tutorial on [url http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/components.html]Swing Components.
Also you should be invoking super.paintComponent(...) in the paintComponent() method. Again, see the tutorial from above for the section on "Custom Painting".