Moving JPanel in JLayeredPane

Question

Hello!
I'm tryiing to make information board which retrieve data from DB and shows the data graphically at the applet.
Thus, I made some indicators,which extends JPanel, and put them on JLayeredPane. the data also have position information and if the position is changed and a position of indicator should be changed.
However, I couldn't make it move at the layeredPane.
I used setBounds, setLocation, repaint, revalidate with all possible cases, but failed too. :-(
Here is my code...
any comments or help would be appreciated.
<code>
import javax.swing.*;
import org.jdom.Element;
import java.awt.*;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Vector;
public class CenterPanel2 extends JPanel{
     private JLayeredPane layeredPane;
     private JPanel backImage;
     //width and height of background image panel(backImage)
     private int width, height;
     private Vector indicators;
     public CenterPanel2(List parts){
          //Create and set the layeredPane property
          this.layeredPane = new JLayeredPane();
          this.layeredPane.setOpaque(false);
          this.setBackground( Color.lightGray );
//draw the background image
          backImage = new PanelBackImage();
          width = (int)backImage.getPreferredSize().getWidth();
          height = (int)backImage.getPreferredSize().getHeight();
//set layeredPane and add image
this.layeredPane.setPreferredSize ( new Dimension( width+20, height+20) );
//bottommost layer
this.layeredPane.add(backImage, JLayeredPane.DEFAULT_LAYER);
backImage.setBounds(0, 0, width, height);
//make vector to store indicators
indicators = new Vector();
     for (int i = 0; i < parts.size(); i++) {
          Element epart = (Element)parts.get(i);
          PART part = new PART(epart);
          String type = part.getType();
          int x = part.getPositionX();
          int y = part.getPositionY();
          int id = part.getId();
          if( type.equals("A")){
               Indicator a = new AType(x,y);
               a.setID(id);
               indicators.addElement(a);
          else if( type.equals("B")){
               Indicator b = new BType(x,y);
               b.setID(id);
               indicators.addElement(b);
          else {}//do dothing
     }//for
     //add to layeredPane
          for(int i = 0; i<indicators.size();i++){
               JPanel tmp = (JPanel) indicators.get(i);
               //add to the second mostbottom layer
               tmp.setBounds(tmp.getX(), tmp.getY(), 100, 100);
               this.layeredPane.add(tmp, JLayeredPane.PALETTE_LAYER);
//finally add layeredpane to this
this.add(layeredPane);
     }//CenterPanel()
///this is called my JApplet update()
     public void updatePanel(List parts){
          System.out.println("centerpanel2: updatePanel has been called!");
          for(int i=0; i<parts.size();i++){
               Element epart = (Element)parts.get(i);
               PART part = new PART(epart);
               int id = part.getId();
               int x = part.getPositionX();
               int y = part.getPositionY();
               Rectangle tmpRec = new Rectangle(x, y, 100, 100);
               for(int j=0;j<indicators.size();j++){
                    Indicator tmp = (Indicator)indicators.get(j);
                    JPanel jtmp = (JPanel) tmp;
                    //if ID is same and position was changed move panel
                    if(id == tmp.getID() && !tmpRec.equals(jtmp.getBounds())){
                         jtmp.setBounds(x,y,100,100);
               }//inner for
          }//out for
     }//update
}//end of centerPanle class
</code>

Answer 1

what you could do is create a sligtly smaller Panel that held a JLabel that was really small and the pull down meny and then add that as one alowing you to move stuff by grabing the JLabel which dosn't even have to have text.