Variable textArea not found in class javax.swing.JFrame...

Question

Making progress on this issue -- but still stuck. Again trying to get the text from a JTextArea on exit:
        frame.addWindowListener
       (new WindowAdapter() {
         public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e)
            System.out.println("Why me???" + frame.textArea.getText());
        });User MARSIAN helped me understand the scope fo the variables and now that has been fixed. Unfortunately I cannot access my variable textArea in the above code. If get this error:
Error: variable textArea not found in class javax.swing.JFrame
What am I doing wrong?
import  java.net.*;
import  javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import FragImpl.*;
public class Framework extends WindowAdapter {
    public int numWindows = 0;
    private Point lastLocation = null;
    private int maxX = 500;
    private int maxY = 500;
    JFrame frame;
    public Framework() {
        newFrag();
        Dimension screenSize = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize();
        maxX = screenSize.width - 50;
        maxY = screenSize.height - 50;
        makeNewWindow();
    public void makeNewWindow() {
        frame = new MyFrame(this);  //*
        numWindows++;
        System.out.println("Number of windows: " + numWindows);
        if (lastLocation != null) {
            //Move the window over and down 40 pixels.
            lastLocation.translate(40, 40);
            if ((lastLocation.x > maxX) || (lastLocation.y > maxY)) {
                lastLocation.setLocation(0, 0);
            frame.setLocation(lastLocation);
        } else {
            lastLocation = frame.getLocation();
        System.out.println("Frame location: " + lastLocation);
        frame.setVisible(true);
        frame.addWindowListener
       (new WindowAdapter() {
         public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e)
            System.out.println("Why me???" + frame.textArea.getText());
    //This method must be evoked from the event-dispatching thread.
    public void quit(JFrame frame) {
        if (quitConfirmed(frame)) {
            System.exit(0);
        System.out.println("Quit operation not confirmed; staying alive.");
    private boolean quitConfirmed(JFrame frame) {
        String s1 = "Quit";
        String s2 = "Cancel";
        Object[] options = {s1, s2};
        int n = JOptionPane.showOptionDialog(frame,
                "Windows are still open.\nDo you really want to quit?",
                "Quit Confirmation",
                JOptionPane.YES_NO_OPTION,
                JOptionPane.QUESTION_MESSAGE,
                null,
                options,
                s1);
        if (n == JOptionPane.YES_OPTION) {
            return true;
        } else {
            return false;
     private void newFrag()
          Frag frag = new FragImpl();
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Framework framework = new Framework();
class MyFrame extends JFrame {
    protected Dimension defaultSize = new Dimension(200, 200);
    protected Framework framework = null;
    private Color color = Color.yellow;
    private Container c;
    JTextArea textArea;
    public MyFrame(Framework controller) {
        super("New Frame");
        framework = controller;
        setDefaultCloseOperation(DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE);
        setSize(defaultSize);
        //Create a text area.
        textArea = new JTextArea(
                "This is an editable JTextArea " +
                "that has been initialized with the setText method. " +
                "A text area is a \"plain\" text component, " +
                "which means that although it can display text " +
                "in any font, all of the text is in the same font."
        textArea.setFont(new Font("Serif", Font.ITALIC, 16));
        textArea.setLineWrap(true);
        textArea.setWrapStyleWord(true);
        textArea.setBackground ( Color.yellow );
        JScrollPane areaScrollPane = new JScrollPane(textArea);
        //Create the status area.
        JPanel statusPane = new JPanel(new GridLayout(1, 1));
        ImageIcon icoOpen = null;
        URL url = null;
        try
            icoOpen = new ImageIcon("post_it0a.gif"); //("doc04d.gif");
        catch(Exception ex)
            ex.printStackTrace();
            System.exit(1);
        setIconImage(icoOpen.getImage());
        c = getContentPane();
        c.setBackground ( Color.yellow );
        c.add ( areaScrollPane, BorderLayout.CENTER )  ;
        c.add ( statusPane, BorderLayout.SOUTH );
        c.repaint ();
}

Answer 1

Yeah!!! It works. Turned out to be a combination of DrKlap's and Martisan's suggestions -- had to change var frame's declaration from JFrame to MyFrame:
    MyFrame frame;Next, created the external class -- but again changed JFrame references to MyFrame:
public class ShowOnExit extends WindowAdapter {
//   JFrame aFrame;
   MyFrame aFrame;
   public ShowOnExit(MyFrame f) {
      aFrame = f;
   public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e)
      System.out.println("Why me???" + aFrame.textArea.getText()); // aFrame here not frame !!!
}This worked. So looks like even though the original code added a WindowListener to 'frame', the listener didn't couldn't access frame's methods unless it was explicitly passed in as a parameter. Let me know if that's wrong.
Thanks again, all.