Updating JOptionPane message dynamically

Question

I need to have a option pane where the message gets updated dynamically, something like "Time remaining n sec" where n decreases by 1 every sec. I am using JOptionPane.setMessage to do this, but sometimes (and it's easy to reproduce), the click on the "OK" button does not work, as if the mouse click event was completely missed. Here is the code, any idea why this could be happening? Any other suggestions?
import java.util.Timer;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.util.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
public class OptionPaneTest
public void showDialog(JFrame parent)
JOptionPane pane = new JOptionPane();
JDialog dialog = pane.createDialog(parent , "some msg");
          TimerTask msgTask = new MessageUpdater(pane, 60);
          Timer msgTimer = new Timer(true);
          msgTimer.scheduleAtFixedRate(msgTask, new Date(), 1000);
dialog.show();
msgTask.cancel();
class MessageUpdater extends TimerTask
private int time;
JOptionPane pane = null;
private static final String msg = "Time left = " ;
public MessageUpdater(JOptionPane pane, int time)
this.pane = pane;
this.time = time;
public void run()
if(time >= 0)
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable()
public void run()
pane.setMessage(msg + time);
time --;
public static void main(String[] args)
try
UIManager.setLookAndFeel("com.sun.java.swing.plaf.windows.WindowsLookAndFeel");
catch (Exception e) { };
JFrame frame = new JFrame();
frame.setSize(300,400);
frame.setLocation(200,200);
frame.show();
OptionPaneTest opt = new OptionPaneTest();
opt.showDialog(frame);
Thanks!

Answer 1

Hello Raman,
out of ca. 40 trials I could reproduce the effect twice. Is such a ratio inacceptable for you? It is obviously not a coding problem. I met similar phenomenons with quite simple GUIs, particularly with 1.3, but much, much less with 1.4.
If you can spare the JOptionPane, you might try to display the seconds on a (temporarily) free part of your GUI. Not a great idea, I know; and of course, there's no guarantee.
Regards
Joerg