Button focus for mnemonic control

Question

Does anybody know how to set the focus on a JButton, in order for the mnemonic key to work? I have a Frame with textarea and a button, and the button ("Close") is set with a mnemonic key (`C`). I just don't know how to set the focus on the button so that when I hit Alt + C, the window will be close. Here is my code sample:
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class BorderExample {
     private Frame f;
private JButton close;
private Panel p;
private TextArea ta;
public BorderExample() {
f = new Frame("Border Layout");
close = new JButton("Close");
close.setMnemonic('C');
close.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
     System.exit(0);
ta = new TextArea();
ta.append("Hello World");
ta.setEditable(false);
public void launchFrame() {
f.add(ta, BorderLayout.CENTER);
p = new Panel();
p.add(close);
f.add(p, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
f.pack();
f.setSize(200, 200);
f.setVisible(true);
public static void main(String[] args) {
BorderExample ex = new BorderExample();
ex.launchFrame();
Any suggestion is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

hi,
this time i got ur exact problem. actually mnemonic control workes fine if all the components are in the same container. in ur example, they r in different panels. so, we need to make following changes :
1) create a reusable action listener object, not the anonymous.
2) call one method on the button panel : (methos in JComponent class, bur depricated since JDK1.3.)
p.registerKeyboardAction(<action listener object>, <String action command>, KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(<key char value for mnemonic control>),JPanel.WHEN_IN_FOCUSED_WINDOW);
this will fire the desirable event, even if u press alt-c while typing in text area.
and regarding the grey color of text area, i am sorry about my previous reply. in disabled mode, background color doesn't change. just the text color changes and u can set that text color by calling this method of JTextComponent
jtextcomp.setDisabledTextColor(Color c) ;
hope this helps!!
anshu