How to retrieve default background color for JPanels or other containers?

Question

Hi everybody, I've written a small class extending the default JTextArea, intended to provide the functionality of a small, descriptive item in JPanels.
import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class JInfoTextArea extends JTextArea{
     public JInfoTextArea(String text){
          super(text);
          setEditable(false);
          setFont(Font.decode("SansSerif"));
          setFocusable(false);
          setLineWrap(true);
          setWrapStyleWord(true);
//          setBackground(contentPane.getBackground());
          setAlignmentX(Component.LEFT_ALIGNMENT);
          setBorder(BorderFactory.createEmptyBorder(5,5,5,5));
}As you can see, there formerly used to be a third parameter, namely contentPane, which contained a reference to the parent Container in order to set the TextArea's background color appropriately for transparency.
Now, is there ANY way to retrieve the background color without either passing a dedicated parameter or doing something like
setBackground((new JPanel()).getBackground());Any help is greatly appreciated!
Yours, Stefanie

Answer 1

To answer your original question the UIManager contains properties of the various components. In case your interested the following program has a fancy GUI display of all the components:
http://www.discoverteenergy.com/files/ShowUIDefaults.java