Speed issue when getting bounds of single monitor in multi-screen display

Question

I've written the following code which should get the bounds of the first monitor in a n-view (multi-screen) set up so I can size JFrame objects relative to the dimensions of this first monitor. However, this bit of code seems to slow done my constructor by a significant amount of time (ie my program now takes 5 seconds to load as opposed to loading almost instaneously). Is there anything I can do to get this information more quickly? And why does this code take so long to execute?
GraphicsEnvironment ge = GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment();
GraphicsDevice[] gs =  ge.getScreenDevices();
GraphicsDevice gd = gs[0];
GraphicsConfiguration[] gc = gd.getConfigurations();
Rectangle virtualBounds = new Rectangle(gc[0].getBounds());      Thanks in advance,
-jake

Answer 1

I was curious (having never delt with this stuff before about your problem so I put your code into a simple frame and ran it. Sure enough it took on average 2.7s to determine the bounds information and less than a tenth of a secondto setup the GUI. So I added code to print out the timmings of each call in your code and found that almost all of it was in "gd.getConfigurations()". This method says it returns all of the GraphicsConfiguration objects for the device. That could be a lot of objects (on my system it returns 8).
When I switched to calling getDefaultConfiguration I get the same answer and it comes back in 0 milliseconds making the GUI setup the slowest part:-)
I am not sure if getDefaultConfiguration is what you want. It is unclear to me that the first element in the configurations array represents the current mode of the device and it is unclear if the detault is the current mode either. I guess you can experiment and see if the default is the configuration you want or not.
good luck,
IL
I attached my code so you can see what I did:/*
* Created on Jul 12, 2003
* Created by Leslie Software (<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>)
* Copyright 2003 Leslie Software
package forum.multiplemonitors;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
* @author ileslie Leslie Software (<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>)
public class MultipleMonitorsFrame extends JFrame {
     public static void main(String[] args) {
          MultipleMonitorsFrame frame = new MultipleMonitorsFrame ();
          frame.setVisible (true);
     public MultipleMonitorsFrame ()  {
          super ("Monitor Query Timing");
          setDefaultCloseOperation (JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
          long timeBeforeMonitorQuery = System.currentTimeMillis ();
          //  Get the information on the first monitor
          GraphicsEnvironment ge = GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment();
          GraphicsDevice[] gs =  ge.getScreenDevices();
//          System.out.println ("After getScreenDevices\t " + System.currentTimeMillis ());
          GraphicsDevice gd = gs[0];
          //  Origonally retrieving all configurations and looking at the first
//          GraphicsConfiguration[] gc = gd.getConfigurations();
//          System.out.println ("After getConfigurations\t " + System.currentTimeMillis ());
//          Rectangle virtualBounds = new Rectangle(gc[0].getBounds());
          //  Now just asking for the default          
          GraphicsConfiguration defaultgc = gd.getDefaultConfiguration();
          Rectangle virtualBounds = new Rectangle (defaultgc.getBounds());
          long timeAfterMonitorQuery = System.currentTimeMillis ();
          long monitorQueryTime = timeAfterMonitorQuery - timeBeforeMonitorQuery;
          long timeBeforeGUISetup = System.currentTimeMillis ();
          //  Setup the GUI
          //  Report on timing (including dummy string for gui setup
          JLabel monitorTimeLabel = new JLabel ("Finding out about the monitor took " + monitorQueryTime + " milliseconds");
          JLabel guiSetupTimeLabel = new JLabel ("X");
          //  Report on monitor dimentions          
          JPanel monitorInfoPanel = new JPanel ();
          JLabel monitorInfoTitle = new JLabel ("First monitor size is:");
          JTextField monitorWidth = new JTextField ("" + virtualBounds.width);
          monitorWidth.setEditable(false);
          JLabel monitorInfoBy = new JLabel ("by");
          JTextField monitorHeight = new JTextField ("" + virtualBounds.height);
          monitorHeight.setEditable(false);
          monitorInfoPanel.add (monitorInfoTitle);
          monitorInfoPanel.add (monitorInfoTitle);
          monitorInfoPanel.add (monitorWidth);
          monitorInfoPanel.add (monitorInfoBy);
          monitorInfoPanel.add (monitorHeight);
          getContentPane ().add (monitorTimeLabel, BorderLayout.NORTH);
          getContentPane ().add (monitorInfoPanel, BorderLayout.CENTER);
          getContentPane ().add (guiSetupTimeLabel, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
          pack ();
          long timeAfterGUISetup = System.currentTimeMillis ();
          long guiSetupTime = timeAfterGUISetup - timeBeforeGUISetup;
          //  This is technicly wrong since we should not be accessing a realized GUI component
          //  outside of the event thread but it works and this is just a test app     
          guiSetupTimeLabel.setText ("Setting up the GUI took about " + guiSetupTime + " milliseconds");
}