How do I add buttons to specific spots on a panel?

Question

Hi,
I currently have a 500 * 500 image which is the background of a JPanel (So I suppose I have a 500 * 500 JPanel, basically).
I would like to be able to place (20*20) buttons on various places of this image - for instance, add button1 at position (200, 420), then button2 at position (100, 480), etc. Is there a straight forward way to do this?

Answer 1

Ahh, looks like you need to use setBounds rather than setLocation, small little sample I came up with:
public class AbsoluteTest extends JFrame {
    public AbsoluteTest() {
        JPanel mainPanel = new JPanel();
        mainPanel.setLayout(null);
        mainPanel.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(500, 500));
        JButton testButton1 = new JButton("Test Button 1");
        JButton testButton2 = new JButton("Test Button 2");
        mainPanel.add(testButton1);
        mainPanel.add(testButton2);
        testButton1.setBounds(200, 100, 140, 24);
        testButton2.setBounds(100, 400, 140, 24);
        this.getContentPane().add(mainPanel);
        this.pack();
        this.setVisible(true);
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        new AbsoluteTest();
}And a Sun tutorial:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/layout/none.html