Thread suspension problem

Question

I have a swing problem, which needs some threading code, but I barely understand it.
My text field components change the underlying data when the focus is lost. When I click on a different tab in the JTabbedPane while editing a field, at the time the ChangeListener runs, the focus is not lost, so data for the input field is not updated. I tried the following to wait for one of the new tab pane components to be shown, but it does not work.
class TabFocusListener implements ComponentListener
     private Component comp;
     public TabFocusListener(Component comp)
          this.comp = comp;
          comp.addComponentListener(this);
          try
               // prg. gets the lock for this object and waits until comp. shown
               synchronized(this) { wait(10000); }
          catch(InterruptedException ex)
     public void componentShown(ComponentEvent e)
          comp.removeComponentListener(this);
          // frees prg. thread that holds the lock for this object
          notifyAll();
     public void componentHidden(ComponentEvent e){}
     public void componentMoved(ComponentEvent e){}
     public void componentResized(ComponentEvent e){}
}

Answer 1

There's a Swing forum for Swing problems. Those guys probably have a solution since they do Swing all day.
You're waiting/notifying on different objects. "this" refers to the current object. If two different thread call the constructor then there will be two different objects ("this").
It's also a very bad idea to put a wait inside a constructor. See Brian Goetz's article here: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-jtp0618.html
You cannot use the object until it is fully constructed.