Disabling a panel and its children---help

Question

I have textfields and JComboBoxes in my JPanel.
Depeding on some conditions, I would like to disable
the user from entering any value in the text fields and
choosing from JComboBox. If I set the setEnabled method to false,
the existing values in those fields greyed-out. Because
of this, the fields look "dull". Is there anyway, I can disable
those fields while the look and feel remains the same.
Thanks.

Answer 1

morgalr,
I can see both points. I agree wholeheartedly with you that when programmers stick to standards things are much better for users. Let me as-sure you that I am the first (and loudest) complainer about this. When I am forced to use a GUI that does not conform to my accustomed collection of [keyboard shortcut/mouseless usablility] features, I am famous for shamelessly cussing the thoughtless designer/programmer.
I think that disabled/grayed-out looking controls tell the user "I am not relevant right now". But sometimes you don't want the control to say "I am not relevant right now", but rather "I am displaying useful information in a place where it makes sense for you to see it but not to change it right now". And grayed-out controls can be difficult to read.
For example, I once had an application that listed 15 rows of information about slots in a physical device I was talking to serially. The 15-row list served a dual purpose: it showed software config info corresponding to each physical slot, and it allowed editing of slot's configuration only if the slot was not configured yet. Since each row consisted of a label, a combobox, 2 textfields, and a button, disabling some rows looked ugly and made the information presented difficult to read (in other words, the configured information looked less important than the not-yet-configured info, when it should have been looking more important). Furthermore, in the case when a row corresponded to an absent physical device, that row rightfully needed to be disabled. I chose to make my own disabled look for the not-yet-configured rows. It involved hiding the button, changing the background of the label, textfield, and background panel itself to yellowish (so that they didn't really look like controls anymore), but they were still lined up with and had a consistant look as the non-disabled rows. For real-estate purposes, this single list was a very intuitive way to look at this info -- At a glance user could tell (1) which rows were already configured, (2) the configuration information about those rows, (3) which rows needed to be configured, and (4) which rows were irrelevant.
I know it's hard to explain the GUI theory without showing, but I am trying to give example of a situation when overriding the normal disabled look was a good thing. But the comboboxes could not easily have their look changed, and that caused me grief (I was still quite a newbie then and hadn't ever dreamed of overriding the UI or subcomponents of anything).
/Mel