Ensuring stateChanged fires whenever componentRemoved fires in JTabbedPane

Question

Hello,
I have a question on how to ensure that a ChangeEvent fires (once and only once) every time a tab is removed.
I have a JTabbedPane that has a ChangeListener and ContainerListener hooked to it. What I've concluded is that:
-if a tab is added to an empty JTabbedPane:
1.) componentAdded fires,
2.) stateChanged fires
-if a tab is added to a JTabbedPane already containing panes:
1.) componentAdded fires
-if a tab is removed from a JTabbedPane:
1.) componentRemoved fires
2.) stateChanged fires only if there are no tabs to the right of the tab being removed and the index must shift left.
Problem scenario:
I have a 5 tabbed JTabbedPane in an extended class with a variable to hold the previously selected tab. The third tab is removed and the 2 tabs to the right shift left. The selectedIndex is no longer pointing to the same pane, and stateChanged doesn't fire in this case. I need to know that this has occurred so that I can properly update the preivously_selected variable and an application state holding object.
I've tried calling the stateChanged method from the componentRemoved call (which is fired by removeTab()), but by this time the selectedIndex has already changed, so I can't properly test the (JTabbedPane.getSelectedIndex() == JTabbedPane.getTabCount()) condition before calling stateChanged(). I need this information to update the previously_selected index.
Does anyone know of a better approach than the one I'm using, or is there another listener that would notify me of this change?
Thanks,
j64thnotes

Answer 1

This is how I do it:
tabbedPane = new JTabbedPane()
     public void remove(int tab)
          super.remove( tab );
          int after = getSelectedIndex();
          //  The selected tab remained the same after this remove, consider
          //  it a state changed
          if (after == tab)
               fireStateChanged();
};