How to pass events from enclosed JApplet to enclosing JFrame?

Question

Perhaps a bit of an obscure problem, but I have an application here that involves displaying JApplets within a JFrame. As long as I do nothing to give the displayed JApplet focus, I am able to use keyboard shortcuts to access my various JMenu items. However, the moment I interact with the JApplet and it gets focus (say, by entering text in a JTextField), those keyboard shortcuts no longer work.
I imagine what's happening is that the JApplet assumes that it must be the root component and does not pass events up to the superclass. Is there any way to allow the events to be passed on from the JApplet to the enclosing JFrame? Is this even possible?
Any help would be greatly anticipated.
- Fromage

Answer 1

Hi FTD,
I just about get your example; it is like a containment hierarchy right - one current, one proposed?
If it is required that there is only one base class to maintain, I am positive this can be satisfied. I suppose our ideas are similar... the point I was trying to make though is that you can implement you AnalysisClasses independent of the top-level container it resides in. The JApplet itself perhaps just needs to handle/marshal <applet> parameters (if any) while the JFrame has only JFrame specific initalisation to take care of - this can feasibly be done from the main method of the AnalysisClass. Effectively you get:
JFrame --> JDesktopPane --> JInternalFrame x 3 --> AnalysisClass
or
JApplet --> AnalysisClass
I do not fully understand what role the BaseGUIClass has... in my example, I have omitted it assuming its functionality could be redistributed to AnalysisClass or one of JInternalFrame or JApplet. Does it contain a lot of initialisation code and therefore am I wrong to make this assumption?
'The application GUI itself is simple...', would this be the AnalysisClass and does this mean it can be dropped into a JFrame or JApplet and manage itself? If so, but not to annoy you, I would still recommend the JInternalFrames.
I think it would frustrate me quite a bit if my superiors were rigid... it is very possible to implement this so that there is only one version of a class to maintain. The question is how much programming is required to achieve this. In my opinon, not a lot; perhaps with respect to your bosses/dealines, too much.
Here's an idea:
public class ApplicationGUI extends JApplet
    public void initialise()
        AnalysisClass tool = null;
        switch (Integer.parseInt(getParameter("toolType")))
            case 1:
                tool = ....
            break;
            case 2:
                tool = ....
            break;
            case 3:
                tool = ....
            break;
        if (tool != null)
            setContentPane(tool);
    public void start()
    public void stop()
    public void destroy()
    public static void main(String[] args)
        JFrame jFrame = new JFrame("Application Name");
        JDesktopPane jDesktop = new JDesktopPane();
        JInternalFrame jiFrame1 = new JInternalFrame("Tool 1", true, true, true, true);
        JInternalFrame jiFrame2 = new JInternalFrame("Tool 2", true, true, true, true);
        JInternalFrame jiFrame3 = new JInternalFrame("Tool 3", true, true, true, true);       
        jDesktop.add(jiFrame1);
        jDesktop.add(jiFrame2);
        jDesktop.add(jiFrame3);
        jFrame.setContentPane(jDesktop);
        jFrame.setVisible(true);
}BTW if you managed to add the JApplet to a JPanel, why couldn't you add it to the JFrame?
Kind regards,
Darren
ps. are you based in England?
pps. apologises for making your name sound like STD, lol
ppps. apologies for posting code when you prob don't want it... I am at work, bored.