Custom tabs for JTabbedPane?

Question

Is there no way to customize the contents of a tab for a JTabbedPane? I mean, sure, icon and label are nice. But say I want a "X" button on it to close the tab. Is there no way to do something like that?
It would seem like a useful thing to have a JTab component that is a container which displays the tab itself. The default contents could be a JLabel for the icon/label, but then if I wanted to add a button, I could do so.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think so. I've searched around and don't see any way (I'm not even sure that a customized TabbedPaneUI would even work here)...

Answer 1

Check this out: http://www.infonode.net/index.html?itp
This JTabbedPane alternative is designed just as you described: each tab is a separate component, containing the label, icon, etc., plus the "content" component. Adding a button that removes the tab is trivial, as shown below. Another feature I'm particularly fond of is the "compression" layout policy, which squeezes the tabs to fit the available width. I much prefer that scheme to scrolling tabs, and they've implemented it very nicely.
The only quibble I have with it is the way it handles keyboard focus. Either I'm missing something, or it just doesn't work sensibly. The sample code includes a workaround that forces the selected content component to always have the focus.
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import net.infonode.tabbedpanel.*;
import net.infonode.tabbedpanel.titledtab.*;
public class TabbedPanelDemo
  public static void main(String[] args)
    // Reduce padding around tabs, especially to the right of the
    // the "remove" button.  If there's a way to do this through
    // the TabbedPanel API, I haven't found it.
    UIManager.put("TabbedPane.tabInsets", new Insets(0, 5, 1, 1));
    JFrame frame = new JFrame("TabbedPanelDemo");
    frame.addWindowListener(
      new WindowAdapter()
        public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e)
          System.exit(0);
    final TabbedPanel tp = new TabbedPanel();
    tp.getProperties().setTabLayoutPolicy(TabLayoutPolicy.COMPRESSION);
    tp.addTab(makeTab("First Panel",  "Panel 1"));
    tp.addTab(makeTab("Second Panel", "Panel 2"));
    tp.addTab(makeTab("Third Panel",  "Panel 3"));
    tp.addTab(makeTab("Fourth Panel", "Panel 4"));
    tp.addTab(makeTab("Fifth Panel",  "Panel 5"));
    // Keep the focus in the selected textarea.  If you comment out
    // this statement, the focus will shift to the the Close button
    // every time you select a different tab.
    tp.addTabListener(
      new TabAdapter()
        public void tabSelected(TabStateChangedEvent evt)
          tp.getSelectedTab().getContentComponent().requestFocus();
        public void tabRemoved(TabRemovedEvent evt)
          tp.getSelectedTab().getContentComponent().requestFocus();
    frame.add(tp, BorderLayout.CENTER);
    Box box = Box.createHorizontalBox();
    box.add(Box.createHorizontalGlue());
    JButton btn = new JButton("Close");
    btn.addActionListener(
      new ActionListener()
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt)
          System.exit(0);
    box.add(btn);
    frame.add(box, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
    frame.setSize(400, 150);
    frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
    frame.setVisible(true);
  private static Icon removeIcon = UIManager.getIcon(
      "InternalFrame.paletteCloseIcon");
  private static Insets zeroInsets = new Insets(0,0,0,0);
  static Tab makeTab(String label, String text)
    JTextArea content = new JTextArea(text);
    final TitledTab tab = new TitledTab(label, null, content, null);
    // This is all you have to do to add a "remove" button to a tab
    JButton b = new JButton(removeIcon);
    b.setMargin(zeroInsets);
    b.addActionListener(
      new ActionListener()
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt)
          tab.getTabbedPanel().removeTab(tab);
    b.setFocusable(false);
    tab.setTitleComponent(b);
    return tab;
}