JLayeredPane - keeping all contained components filling the layeredPane

Question

I'm having some troubles keeping contained components inside a JLayeredPane so they're all filling the pane.
The desired effect I want is to have a region of the window that contains two panels -- one for standard view/editing, and an overlayed transparent panel above it, which, at times, will show icons overlayed over the base panel -- basically an OSD layer over a panel that will be showing video.
I've gone the approach of using a JLayeredPane and adding the base panel, but I'm having troubles getting it to make sure it fills the entirety of the JLayeredPane.
I thought of several approaches:
1.) Set up the JLayeredPane with a BorderLayout, and set the components all to CENTER, but then I realized that with BorderLayout, each position can only have one component assigned to it.
So, this approach is a no-go. :(
2.) Set up a ComponentListener on the JLayeredPane, listening for componentResized, and resizing the contained panels to event.getComponent().getSize(). This approach did result in a resize happening on the component I was testing, but alas, it resizes it to the original, pre-resized size! Reading the docs, and what others have said on the msg board, this seems to be going against what I'm reading and hearing about.
Does anyone have any ideas for me? I'm all ears.
Is there a radically different approach I could take?
What I'm going after is kinda like the glassPane feature on a Frame, but I'm not working with a frame, just one panel inside the frame of my main application window.. And I'd like it so I could encapsulate the OSD panel in it's own derived class -- that's what I'm doing right now -- so I can have custom methods for manipulating the OSD.

Answer 1

bsampieri wrote:
For this type of situation, I usually subclass JLayeredPane and override the doLayout() method. In there, assuming you want to have everything on it's layer fill the layer it's on, just set it's bounds to (0, 0, w, h) with the width/height of the layered pane itself. Aha! That worked like a charm! Just what I was after. I need to get more comfortable altering the inner-workings of swing components through subclassing.
If you need something more advanced, you'd have to have a way to determine which components should go where/what size.Nope -- I didn't need to subclass in this case -- I want each and every item in the JLayeredPane to fill the entirety of the container. I sorta figured that there should be a relatively easy solution to it, but I hadn't been able to figure out how, and googling it up didn't seem to result in any useful information on the subject.
Thank you very much bsamieri!
Here's exactly what I ended up doing:
package com.tripleplayint.newvideopreviewermockup;
import java.awt.Component;
import javax.swing.JLayeredPane;
* A panel widget that allows components to be layered on top of one another,
* where each component fills the entirety of this container.
* This is only useful when all but the lowest layer is set transparent, as
* the highest opaque layer will obscure any layers below it.
* @NOTE If one wants to move the layers to choose which one is visible, your
* better option is to use a JPanel with the CardLayout.
* @author kkyzivat
public class FilledLayeredPane extends JLayeredPane {
     * Layout each of the components in this JLayeredPane so that they all fill
     * the entire extents of the layered pane -- from (0,0) to (getWidth(), getHeight())
    @Override
    public void doLayout() {
        // Synchronizing on getTreeLock, because I see other layouts doing that.
        // see BorderLayout::layoutContainer(Container)
        synchronized(getTreeLock()) {
            int w = getWidth();
            int h = getHeight();
            for(Component c : getComponents()) {
                c.setBounds(0, 0, w, h);
}