Displaying Loading Screen

Question

Hello,
I'm trying to make a simple loading screen that consists of a JFrame that has a JTextArea. I have a thread that will change the text in the textarea every 3 seconds. For some reason it will not load display. However I have put a print command to prompt and it works there fine. Any ideas? I've tried several different combination of threads with no luck. Here is the basic idea of what happens:
Code from main program:
new loadingWindow("loading");
I have a long process running.
loadingWindow.killLoadingThread();Code for loadingWindow:
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.*;
class loadingWindow extends JFrame
     private String loading[] = {"Loading","Loading.","Loading..","Loading...","Loading....","Loading....."};
     private JTextField currentString;
     private JFrame frame;
     public static boolean threadFlag=false;
     public loadingWindow(String title)
          displayWindow(title);          
          new LoadingThread();
     public void displayWindow(String title)
          frame = new JFrame(title);
          currentString = new JTextField(50);
          frame.add(currentString);
          frame.getContentPane();
          frame.setSize(200,100);
          frame.setVisible(true);
     public static void killLoadingThread()
          threadFlag=false;
     class LoadingThread extends Thread
          public LoadingThread()
               threadFlag=true;
               start();
          public void run()
               int counter=0;
               try
                    while(threadFlag)
                         System.out.println(loading[counter]);
                         currentString.setText(loading[counter]);
                         Thread.sleep(300);
                         counter++;
                         if(counter==loading.length)
                              counter=0;
               catch(Exception e){}
               dispose();
}Basically I want to have a window open up and have a simple text animation run until it is told to stop, while I have a long process running. The long process is a function that gets content from a webpage, so it's not like my processor is at max or anything. Any help would be greatly appriciated.
Thank's
Ricky

Answer 1

Thanks for the quick response. I tried using a timer and got the same result. I made a quick little testing problem that causes the same error that I had before. When you run it you will see that the second JFrame stays blank.
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.event.*;
public class tester extends JFrame implements ActionListener
     private JButton start;
     public tester()
          super("test");
          start = new JButton("Start");
          start.addActionListener(this);
          this.add(start);
          setSize(100,100);
          setVisible(true);
     public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
          begin();
     public void begin()
          new loadingWindow("loading");
          try
               Thread.sleep(10000);
          catch(Exception e){}
          loadingWindow.killLoadingThread();
          dispose();
     public static void main(String args[])
          tester test = new tester();
          test.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
}thanks in advance for any help
Ricky