Tab key event not fired in JTabbedPane

Question

Hello,
I wanted to add the functionality of moving between tabs when Ctrl+Tab is pressed like Windows tabs.
But the tab key listener event is not getting fired by pressing Tab. For all the other key pushes it is working good. It this a problem with Java? Any workarounds?
Here is the sample code:
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
public class TestTab extends JFrame
     public void drawGUI()
          //getContentPane().setLayout(new GridLayout(1, 1));
          JTabbedPane lTabbedPane = new JTabbedPane();
          JPanel lFirstPanel = new JPanel();
          lFirstPanel.add(new JLabel("First Panel"));;
          JPanel lSecondPanel = new JPanel();
          lSecondPanel.add(new JLabel("Second Panel"));;
          lTabbedPane.addTab("Tab1", null, lFirstPanel, "Does nothing");
          lTabbedPane.addTab("Tab1", null,lSecondPanel, "Does nothing");
          getContentPane().add(lTabbedPane);
          lTabbedPane.addKeyListener(new KeyAdapter()
               public void keyPressed(KeyEvent lKeyEvent)
                    System.out.println(lKeyEvent.getKeyText(lKeyEvent.getKeyCode()));
          setDefaultCloseOperation(WindowConstants.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
     public static void main(String[] args)
          TestTab lTestTab = new TestTab();
          lTestTab.drawGUI();
          lTestTab.setSize(200, 200);
          lTestTab.setVisible(true);

Answer 1

The KeyPressed events for TAB and CTRL-TAB are typically consumed by the KeyboardFocusManager for component traversal. What you have to do is adjust traversal keys and add CTRL-TAB as an action of your JTabbedPane. This is usually done with the InputMap/ActionMap, not a KeyListener:
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class X {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Set tabSet = Collections.singleton(KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_TAB, 0));
        KeyStroke ctrlTab = KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_TAB, InputEvent.CTRL_DOWN_MASK);
        final int FORWARD = KeyboardFocusManager.FORWARD_TRAVERSAL_KEYS;
        final JTabbedPane tp = new JTabbedPane();
        //setFocusTraversalKeys to remove ctrl-tab as a forward gesture
        tp.setFocusTraversalKeys(FORWARD, tabSet);
        for (int i=0; i<6; ++i) {
            JPanel p = new JPanel(new GridLayout(0,1));
            JTextArea area = new JTextArea();
            area.setFocusTraversalKeys(FORWARD, Collections.EMPTY_SET);
            p.add(new JScrollPane(area));
            area = new JTextArea();
            area.setFocusTraversalKeys(FORWARD, Collections.EMPTY_SET);
            p.add(new JScrollPane(area));
            tp.addTab("tab " + i,p);
        //add ctrlTab as an action to move to next tab
        Action nextTab = new AbstractAction("nextTab") {
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
                int idx = tp.getSelectedIndex();
                if (idx != -1) {
                    idx = (idx + 1) % tp.getTabCount();
                    tp.requestFocusInWindow();
                    tp.setSelectedIndex(idx);
        InputMap im = tp.getInputMap(JComponent.WHEN_ANCESTOR_OF_FOCUSED_COMPONENT);
        im.put(ctrlTab, nextTab.getValue(Action.NAME));
        tp.getActionMap().put(nextTab.getValue(Action.NAME), nextTab);
        JFrame f= new JFrame("X");
        f.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        f.getContentPane().add(tp);
        f.setSize(400,300);
        f.setVisible(true);
[/code[