JTabbedPane tab alignment top - right hand side

Question

Hi all,
On a JTabbedPane, I would like to force the tab alignment on the top right or left hand side. This is because on a mac the default alignment is centered. So I would like to force the alignment on top - right or top - left, which one ever comes easier.
Any help or hints are appreciated
Thanks
Oscar

Answer 1

The right, or the left? AFAIK, every platform other than the Mac aligns the tabs to the left. If you want Macs to behave the same way, you might be able to subclass MacTabbedPaneUI (or whatever they call it) and force it to use the LayoutManager from BasicTabbedPaneUI. Try this:
import java.awt.LayoutManager;
import javax.swing.UIManager;
import javax.swing.plaf.basic.BasicTabbedPaneUI;
import /* whatever the package is */MacTabbedPaneUI;
public class LeftAlignedTabbedPaneUI extends MacTabbedPaneUI
  public static void initialize()
    String key = "TabbedPaneUI";
    Class cls = LeftAlignedTabbedPaneUI.class;
    String name = cls.getName();
    UIManager.put(key, name);
    UIManager.put(name, cls);
  protected LayoutManager createLayoutManager()
    return new BasicTabbedPaneUI.TabbedPaneLayout();
}In your app's startup code, call LeftAlignedTabbedPaneUI.initialize(); if the L&F is set to Mac. If this doesn't work, you'll probably have to write your own LayoutManager. And if you really want the tabs right-aligned, you'll definitely have to write your own LayoutManager.