Help with layout managers

Question

I can't seem to understand layouts. Or maybe it's text components. Anyway, this little JFrame class seems to act really strangely, and I cannot figure out why.
Can anybody tell me how to get pack() to do something sensible with the components in the main JFrame (the one with the statistics is just for reference.)
The rest of this message is Java code (plus maybe a signature)
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
import javax.swing.JTextArea;
import java.awt.Container;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Dimension;
public class MyFrame extends JFrame {
private String str;
private JPanel panel;
private JButton button;
private JTextField textField;
private JTextArea afterStatus;
private JFrame otherFrame;
private Container otherStuff;
public MyFrame(String s) {
     // Create companion frame to hold statistics.
     afterStatus = new JTextArea();
     otherFrame = new JFrame("Stats");
     otherStuff = otherFrame.getContentPane();
     otherStuff.add(afterStatus, BorderLayout.CENTER);
     otherFrame.pack();
     otherFrame.setVisible(true);
str = s;
textField = new JTextField();
     panel = (JPanel)getContentPane();
button = makeAButton();
panel.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(200, 30));
panel.add(button, BorderLayout.WEST);
panel.add(textField, BorderLayout.EAST);
     textField.setText("Something or other; long so you can see it resize");
setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
     myUpdate();
private void myUpdate() {
     afterStatus.setText("Message is now: " + textField.getText() + "\n\n");
     afterStatus.append("textField Status Before Last Pack:\n");
     afterStatus.append("PreferredSize: " + textField.getPreferredSize() + "\n");
     afterStatus.append("Current Size: " + textField.getSize() + "\n\n");
     afterStatus.append("Button Status Before Last Pack:\n");
     afterStatus.append("PreferredSize: " + button.getPreferredSize() + "\n");
     afterStatus.append("Current Size: " + button.getSize() + "\n\n");
pack();
     afterStatus.append("textField Status After Last Pack:\n");
     afterStatus.append("PreferredSize: " + textField.getPreferredSize() + "\n");
     afterStatus.append("Current Size: " + textField.getSize() + "\n\n");
     afterStatus.append("Button Status After Last Pack:\n");
     afterStatus.append("PreferredSize: " + button.getPreferredSize() + "\n");
     afterStatus.append("Current Size: " + button.getSize() + "\n\n");
     afterStatus.append("ContentPane Status After Last Pack:\n");
     afterStatus.append("PreferredSize: " + panel.getPreferredSize() + "\n");
     afterStatus.append("Current Size: " + panel.getSize() + "\n\n");
     otherFrame.pack();
public static void main(String[] args) {
String text = "Hello World";
MyFrame frame = new MyFrame(text);
frame.setVisible(true);
public JButton makeAButton() {
JButton b = new JButton("Push Me!");
     final JPanel thePanel = panel;
     final MyFrame thisFrame = this;
class ButtonListener implements ActionListener {
private int count;
public ButtonListener() {
count = 0;
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
++count;
textField.setText("A longer than normalouch " + count);
thePanel.revalidate();
          thisFrame.myUpdate();
ButtonListener blist = new ButtonListener();
b.addActionListener(blist);
return b;
public String getText() {
return str;
}

Answer 1

Swing related questions should be posted in the Swing forum.
Use the "code" tags when posting code, so the code retains its original formatting.
panel.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(200, 30));Remove the above line. If you set the preferred size of the panel, then it doesn't care about the preferred size of its contained components.