Changing the application wide default focus traversal policy

Question

Hi,
I have a Swing application built using JDK1.3 where there lots of screens (frames, dialogs with complex screens - panels, tables, tabbed panes etc), in some screens layouts have been used and in other screens instead of any layout, absolute positions and sizes of the controls have been specified.
In some screens setNextFocusableComponent() methods for some components have been called at some other places default focus traversal is used. (which I think is the order in which the components are placed and their postions etc). Focus traversal in each screen works fine.
Now I have to migrate to JDK1.4. Problem now is that after migrating to JDK1.4.2, focus traversal has become a headache. In some screens there is no focus traversal and in some there is it is not what I wanted.
So I thought to replace applicaiton wide default focus traversal policy and I did the following:
///////// Replace default focus traversal policy
java.awt.KeyboardFocusManager.getCurrentKeyboardFocusManager().setDefaultFocusTraversalPolicy(new java.awt.ContainerOrderFocusTraversalPolicy());
But there is no change in the behaviour.
Then I tried following:
///////// Replace default focus traversal policy
java.awt.KeyboardFocusManager.getCurrentKeyboardFocusManager().setDefaultFocusTraversalPolicy(new java.awt.DefaultFocusTraversalPolicy());
I did all this in the main() method of the application before anything else just to ensure that all the components get added after this policy has been set. But no luck.
Does someone has any idea what is the problem here ? I do not want to define my own focus traversal policy for each screen that I use (because thats lot of codes).
Thanks

Answer 1

not that hard if you only have the one focus cycle ( > 1 cycle and it gets a bit harder, sometimes stranger)
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
class Testing
  int focusNumber = 0;
  public void buildGUI()
    JTextField[] tf = new JTextField[10];
    JPanel p = new JPanel(new GridLayout(5,2));
    for(int x = 0, y = tf.length; x < y; x++)
      tf[x] = new JTextField(5);
      p.add(tf[x]);
    final JTextField[] focusList = new JTextField[]{tf[1],tf[0],tf[3],tf[2],tf[5],tf[4],tf[7],tf[6],tf[9],tf[8]};
    JFrame f = new JFrame();
    f.setFocusTraversalPolicy(new FocusTraversalPolicy(){
      public Component getComponentAfter(Container focusCycleRoot,Component aComponent)
        focusNumber = (focusNumber+1) % focusList.length;
        return focusList[focusNumber];
      public Component getComponentBefore(Container focusCycleRoot,Component aComponent)
        focusNumber = (focusList.length+focusNumber-1) % focusList.length;
        return focusList[focusNumber];
      public Component getDefaultComponent(Container focusCycleRoot){return focusList[0];}
      public Component getLastComponent(Container focusCycleRoot){return focusList[focusList.length-1];}
      public Component getFirstComponent(Container focusCycleRoot){return focusList[0];}
    f.getContentPane().add(p);
    f.pack();
    f.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
    f.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    f.setVisible(true);
  public static void main(String[] args)
    SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable(){
      public void run(){
        new Testing().buildGUI();
}