Buttons disappear

Question

Hi all,
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if my problem relates to some of the other postings I've read on the forum or if it's something else I'm not aware of but the problem is this: I display a JFrame with a few JButtons for different options, like a menu of sorts and it works fine but if I recall my method to display the JFrame again later the buttons aren't visible, they're there and work if you click where they should be but I was hoping someone could tell me what I'm doing wrong. Why won't they show up?
Thanks in advance
Denise

Answer 1

Every time you call drawMenu you are creating another panel3 and adding the buttons to it; they can only be used once, ie, added to one component. Try setting up your frame, panel and buttons one time and then using your event handling code to control the visiblitiy of your frame instead of trying to recreate parts of it.
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
public class laingden
  private JButton lookupButton = new JButton("Browse Known Issues");
  private JButton createButton = new JButton("Log New Issue");
  private JButton exitButton = new JButton("Exit");
  private ButtonListener listener = new ButtonListener();
  private JFrame frame = new JFrame();
  public laingden()
    JPanel panel3 = new JPanel();
    panel3.setLayout(new GridLayout(1,3));
    panel3.add(lookupButton);
    panel3.add(createButton);
    panel3.add(exitButton);
    lookupButton.addActionListener(listener);
    createButton.addActionListener(listener);
    exitButton.addActionListener(listener);
    frame.getContentPane().add(panel3, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
    frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    frame.pack();
    frame.setVisible(true);
  public static void main(String args[])
    new laingden();
  private class ButtonListener implements ActionListener
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
      String input;
      if ((JButton)(event.getSource()) == lookupButton)
        frame.hide();
        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Menu closed");
        //I call another method here
//        drawMenu();
      else if ((JButton)(event.getSource()) == createButton)
        frame.hide();
        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Menu closed");
        //I call another method here
//        drawMenu();
      else if ((JButton)(event.getSource()) == exitButton)
        System.exit(0);
}