A list that's not a JList

Question

Hi all,
I'm trying to create what is effectively a list of panels - where each panel (ie list entry) added to the list will contain additional subcomponents (progress bars, buttons, labels, etc).
I could implement this by creating a custom ListCellRenderer for a JList, but I need the panels to be fully interactive, so I'm trying to come up with a solution involving a main JPanel within a JScrollPane, then adding additional subpanels as needed.
However, I'm having a hell of a time trying to get it right - I want each subpanel entry to have a fixed height (say 100px) but to be as wide as the main window is wide (the JScrollPane shouldn't scroll horizontally) (just like in a JList).
Can anyone suggest recommended layout managers to achieve this? Most things I've tried have always just made each subpanel fill the entire available space, or fixed their width so they don't resize to fit horizontally.
To complicate matters, I need to be able to add and remove entries from the list at runtime. A JList is obviously designed for this, but won't let you add interactive panels as entries - unless I've missed something?
Thanks in advance
Iain

Answer 1

You can do this with a JList by using a custom editor in addition to a custom
renderer.
As far as a layout, you have some choices. Some people would suggest
SpringLayout for this, but I'm more comfortable with GridBagLayout, so try
wrapping the (untested) code below in a JFrame. I'm setting the preferred
height to 100 for each panel separately because there's no way for any
layout to do that for you. The width can be any value.
final JPanel pane1 = new JPanel();
pane1.setBackground(Color.RED);
pane1.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(0, 100));
final JPanel pane2 = new JPanel();
pane2.setBackground(Color.GREEN);
pane2.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(0, 100));
final JPanel listPane = new JPanel(new GridBagLayout());
final GridBagConstraints gbc = new GridBagConstraints();
gbc.weightx = 1;
gbc.fill = GridBagConstraints.HORIZONTAL;
gbc.anchor = GridBagConstraints.EAST;
gbc.gridx = 0;
gbc.gridy = 0;
listPane.add(pane1, gbc);
gbc.gridy++;
listPane.add(pane2, gbc);