Panels to be displayed when clicking on a button: general question

Question

Hi there,
I want to design a GUI that will look something like:
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| A | B | C | D | E | F |
That should be two panels:
- bottom panel: just a some buttons (A, B, C...)
- top panel: to start with, it'll be empty/blank, but when a button is pressed, some content should be displayed (buttons, labels, etc)
So, my idea was to have a main UI class, where I would have both panels; and for each different button I'd also have a different class. These classes should just display their own panel within the "top panel".
And that's what I'm not getting.
In the main UI class, I wrote some instances for each possible class that I'd be calling. And each class would have a constructor:
UITesting(Panel aPanel, String aWord)
Where aPanel is the top panel from the main UI, and aWord just a word to display in a lable for example (just testing purposes).
My question:
how do I make visible panelA when I press the buttonA and so on?
Anybody knows where I could find a similar example or tutorial?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Try using a Card Layout.
Giving an Example with two buttons.
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import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.event.*;
public class TestDialog extends JDialog
     private JPanel p3 = new JPanel();
     private CardLayout cd = new CardLayout(0,0);     
     public TestDialog()
          init();
     public static void main(String[] args)
          System.out.println("Hello World!");
          TestDialog t = new TestDialog();
          t.setSize(200,200);
          t.pack();
          t.setVisible(true);
     private void init()
          JPanel p1 = (JPanel)this.getContentPane();
          p1.setLayout(new BorderLayout(0,0));
          JPanel p2 = new JPanel();
          JButton b1 = new JButton("Button1");
          JButton b2 = new JButton("Button2");
          p2.setLayout(new FlowLayout(FlowLayout.CENTER, 0,0));
          p2.add(b1);
          p2.add(b2);
          p1.add(BorderLayout.SOUTH, p2);
          p1.add(BorderLayout.CENTER, p3);
          p3.setLayout(cd);
          JPanel p4 = new JPanel();
          JPanel p5 = new JPanel();
          p4.add(new JLabel("Panel1"));
          p5.add(new JLabel("Panel2"));
          p3.add("Card1", p4);
          p3.add("Card2", p5);
          cd.show(p3, "Card1");
          b1.addActionListener(new ActionListener()
               public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
                    cd.show(p3, "Card1");
          b2.addActionListener(new ActionListener()
               public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
                    cd.show(p3, "Card2");