JMenu and JList

Question

I want to hava a menu that would have some of the same functionality as a JList, such as the cell renderer, the borders and the list models. I'm working inside a JApplet so creating JPopupMenus are out because of it seems to open new Windows in browsers and has that ugly Applet Window warning.
I want to open pop up menus over the list elements.
For example, I have a JList that holds user names for a chat room. When an element in that JList is clicked I want to open a menu that lists commands like "go to users homepage", "private chat", "kick out", etc.
I've written an applet that uses JMenus. But I'd like to have the user list remain a JList because my applet uses the ListModel to pass the list's content to different parts of the program.
I'd like to have similar functionality to the following (but with a JList instead of a JMenuBar holding the contents of the list)
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class MenuTestApplet extends JApplet{
JPanel p = new JPanel(new BorderLayout());
JMenuBar menuBar = new JMenuBar();
JScrollPane scroll;
public MenuTestApplet(){
     getContentPane().add(p, BorderLayout.CENTER);
     menuBar.setBackground(Color.blue.brighter().brighter());
     menuBar.setLayout(new BoxLayout(menuBar, BoxLayout.Y_AXIS));
     for (int i=1; i<50;i++){
     addNewMenu("Menu "+i);
     p.add(new JLabel("nothing here"), BorderLayout.CENTER);
     scroll = new JScrollPane(menuBar);
     p.add(scroll, BorderLayout.CENTER);
public void addNewMenu(String title){
     JMenu m = new JMenu(title);
     m.setBackground(Color.blue.brighter());
     JMenuItem item = new JMenuItem("one");
     item.setBackground(Color.blue.brighter());
     m.add(item);
     item = new JMenuItem("two");
     item.setBackground(Color.blue.brighter());
     m.add(item);
     item = new JMenuItem("THR33");
     item.setBackground(Color.blue.brighter());
     m.add(item);     
     m.setMinimumSize(m.getPreferredSize());
     m.setMenuLocation(7, 3);
     menuBar.add(m);
I'm just looking for ideas right now.
thanks

Answer 1

would simply adding JMenu's to the JList do the trick?
this was suggested by someone to me, but I thought that the elements in the JList are simply painted panels that use the objects toString() in the CellRenderer.