JTextArea not gaining focus

Question

I have a tabbed pane consisting of 2 JPanels. Each panel has a text area (within a scrollpane) on both.
All I want is for the text area to gain focus when its tab has been clicked.
I've tried adding a changelistener to the tabbedpane:
        tabbedPane.addChangeListener(new ChangeListener() {
            public void stateChanged(ChangeEvent e) {
                if (tabbedPane.getSelectedIndex() == 0) {
                    textArea1.requestFocus();
                else {
                    textArea2.requestFocus();
        });but the textareas don't get focus. They do when I press <TAB> but this isn't much use.
Does anyone have any ideas how I can get the textareas to gain focus?

Answer 1

import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.event.ChangeListener;
import javax.swing.event.ChangeEvent;
import java.awt.*;
public class TestFocusTabbedPane extends JTabbedPane {
     private JTextArea theFirstTextArea;
     private JTextArea theSecondTextArea;
     public TestFocusTabbedPane() {
          super();
          JPanel tabPanel = new JPanel(new BorderLayout());
          tabPanel.add(new JButton("just for test"), BorderLayout.NORTH);
          theFirstTextArea = new JTextArea();
          theFirstTextArea.setFocusable(true);
          tabPanel.add(new JScrollPane(theFirstTextArea), BorderLayout.CENTER);
          addTab("first", tabPanel);
          tabPanel = new JPanel(new BorderLayout());
          tabPanel.add(new JButton("just for test"), BorderLayout.NORTH);
          theSecondTextArea = new JTextArea();
          theSecondTextArea.setFocusable(true);
          tabPanel.add(new JScrollPane(theSecondTextArea), BorderLayout.CENTER);
          addTab("second", tabPanel);
          addChangeListener(new ChangeListener() {
               public void stateChanged(ChangeEvent e) {
                    int index = getSelectedIndex();
                    if (index == 0) {
                         theFirstTextArea.requestFocus();
                    } else {
                         theSecondTextArea.requestFocus();
     public static void main(String[] args) {
          final JFrame frame = new JFrame(TestPressedButton.class.getName());
          frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
          frame.getContentPane().add(new TestFocusTabbedPane());
          SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
               public void run() {
                    frame.pack();
                    frame.show();
}This seems to work. I added the JButton just to show that it doesn't get the focus