JFileChooser blocks all JFrames

Question

I believe something like this was asked before already, but I could not find a satisfactory solution.
Situation:
I have X JFrames open. Each frame has a "Browse" button and a "New Window" button, and some content like an image or text. Clicking "Browse" opens a new JFileChooser, and "New Window" opens a new JFrame like all the others.
Problem:
Whenever I click "Browse" in one of the JFrames, I cannot interact with ANY JFrame until the JFileChooser is closed. Clicking buttons has no effect, and no ActionEvents are delivered to either parent window or other windows. Similarly, if the program cannot open the file chosen it displays an error dialog which behaves in exactly the same way, blocking all windows and not just the parent window like would be logical and acceptable.
Failed solution:
In the beginning of the actionPerformed method I start a new thread to actually handle the ActionEvent. I have verified that the actionPerformed method finishes before the JFileChooser is closed, so I know the opening of the filechooser is not blocking the event dispatching thread. I also ran the SwingUtilities check to see whether the JFileChooser opening was running in the event dispatching thread and the result was false.
As far as I can see everything should be ok, but still all my JFrames remain blocked if any of them opens up a JFileChooser or a message window.
Can anyone help?

Answer 1

The dialog created by JFileChooser.showOpenDialog() is made modal
on purpose, so that the return value can be retrieved in a single
threaded flow without having to set listeners etc.
You can embed a JFileChooser in your own JDialog and not make it
modal if you want to. Add a PropertyChangeListener to catch the
APPROVE_SELECTION and CANCEL_SELECTION events, or override
the approveSelection() and cancelSelection() methods.
Leif Samuelsson
Java Swing Team
Sun Microsystems, Inc.