Newbie help: Layout Managers

Question

Hi,
as a newbie in Swing I have difficulties with the Layout Managers... I have read the Swing tutorial but it's still a little bit complicated:
I have a JPanel, I would like to add a JMenuBar, a JToolbar and then 2 additional JPanels at the top and on the left representing rulers like in the "How a Scroll Pane Works" example at
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/scrollpane.html as well as a JTable on the right.
How can I do this... BorderLayout containing my main JPanel at CENTER and the two JPanels representing the rulers at PAGE_START and LINE_START and the JTable at LINE_END? Where can I place then my menu- and toolbar? Can I add a BoxLayout to PAGE_START for that?
In a posting here at the forum I read that the MenuBar should be added to the root Pane. How do I do this? When do I use Content Pane, Layered Pane and Glass Pane?
Do you know a simple example or good tutorials at the web?
Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

Thank you for the link about the rulers.
The rulers goes inside your custom component. It will be like the example at http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/scrollpane.html
Other stuffs layered like this.
package tmp;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
public class LayoutExample extends JFrame
    public static void main( String[] args ) throws Exception
        SwingUtilities.invokeAndWait( new Runnable()
            public void run()
                // All the interaction with GUI do inside the MessageLoop thread!
                LayoutExample l = new LayoutExample();
                l.pack();
                l.setVisible( true );
    protected JMenuBar mainMenu;
    protected JToolBar mainToolBar;
    protected RulesFeaturedScrolPane scrollPane;
    public LayoutExample() throws HeadlessException
        super();
        setDefaultCloseOperation( JFrame.DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE );
        setTitle( "Layout Example" );
        // -------------- CREATING NECESSARY CONTROLS ----------------
        // Menu
        mainMenu = new JMenuBar();
        JMenu mnuFile = mainMenu.add( new JMenu( "File" ) );
        mnuFile.add( new JMenuItem( "Open" ) );
        // ToolBar
        mainToolBar = new JToolBar();
        mainToolBar.add( new JButton( "Open" ) );
        // Customized JScrollPane (with rulers)
        scrollPane = new RulesFeaturedScrolPane();
        // -------------- END OF CREATING NECESSARY CONTROLS ----------------
        // Settig up the components
        setJMenuBar( mainMenu ); // Menu added to JFrame not to its ContentPane
        getContentPane().setLayout( new BorderLayout() );
        getContentPane().add( mainToolBar, BorderLayout.NORTH ); // ToolBar added to the ContentPane
        getContentPane().add( scrollPane, BorderLayout.CENTER ); // Other components added to ContentPane
    public static class RulesFeaturedScrolPane extends JPanel // <----------- this may extend JScrollPane
        public RulesFeaturedScrolPane()
            add( new JLabel( "TODO: this class should have rulers" ) );
}Most interesting things starts at getContentPane().setLayout( new BorderLayout() );