Displaying multiple jpgs in applet

Question

Hello hello
I'd like a little advice on the best way to display a number of jpegs in an applet - it could be any number of jpg's. My main idea so far is to have a scrollable JPanel (if that's possible) - within the panel, for every jpeg that is received (they will arrive from a socket, one by one) a new button will be created to display the jpeg. So ultimately you have a JPanel with many jpegs inside, and which can be scrolled so that a potentially large number of jpegs may be viewed.
Is this a realistic idea? And more to the point, are there better ways to do this?
Cheers
Steve

Answer 1

Hi Steve,
Yes and Yes:
Yes: I like JTables as the appareance is nice.
Yes: To change your Table during runtime, you simply change the TableModel.
That means:
A JTable constructs itsself with a TableModel. Subclassing AbstractTableModel, you will find the most important methods declared 'abstract'.
Use getValueAt( int row, int column ), getRowCount() and getColumnCount() as your 'dynamic' methods.
I assume that you will get your Data over Streams. I assume You will have your images stored in your program as Vector of Images.
This is just pseudo code. It may not work properly, but I hope that makes it easier to follow my thoughts:
getColumnCount()
// four looks fine
return 4;
getRowCount()
return vector.length/4;
getValueAt( int row, int col )
int pos = row*4 + col;
if( pos < vector.length() )
return vector.getElementAt( pos );
else
return ""; // in the case that vector.length is not dividable by 4
With the TableCellRenderer, you will be able to define the appearence of your image ( like putting it on a Button ).
Then, you can add an Image to the vector and call tableModel.revalidate() and the JTable should adjust itsself.
Any questions? ;-)
Just play around a little bit.
Good luck!
Kaethchen