Align left panels inside BoxLayOut / Center a frame center screen

Question

Hi,
I've googled for a good while now so now I'm posting the question I have not found a satisfactory answer. It may be that I've been searching by the wrong terms, because it's an easy thing in concept. This is a JSwing question and all terms below apply to that.
I have a method which takes a container that has a BoxLayout manager. Each item I add is a new row, which is good. The bad thing is that each item is centered aligned. I'm adding a label and textfield into a panel which I then add to the container. I have tried .setAlignmentX to the label, textfield, panel, and all combination pertaining. I can not for the life of me do it. Please see below for pertinent code.
public void addComponentsToPane(Container pane) {
pane.setLayout(new BoxLayout(pane, BoxLayout.Y_AXIS));
JPanel user = new JPanel();
JLabel userL = new JLabel("Username: ");
JTextField userT = new JTextField(20);
user.add(userL);
user.add(userT);
user.setAlignmentX(Component.LEFT_ALIGNMENT);
I hate to put two questions in one thread, but I'm stuck and it's been a long weekend. How come frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null); doesn't set the frame to the center of the window. It's slightly off center; too far to the right and down.
Thanks in advance for any help given by the community. I appreciate it and hope I haven't broken any guidelines for the forum.

Answer 1

Go through the [url http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/box.html]tutorial for BoxLayout where you will find working code samples. After that, if you still have a problem, post a [url http://mindprod.com/jgloss/sscce.html]SSCCE (Short, Self Contained, Compilable and Executable) that members can copy and run to see where you've slipped up.
db