What's wrong about those layouts??

Question

Well, I've been working like crazy to be able to do something with layouts... Let me explain how our program is made...
Main window:
- JContentPane
- JSplitPane with two parts
in each, i have
5 JPanels with information in it
I'm working with Eclipse and its visual editor, but can't seem to figure out a way to do this... In my west panel, I have to put four buttons. I want them to be a certain size and in a certain order. Here is the code generated by the editor:
     private JPanel getJPanel_west() {
          if (jPanel_west == null) {
               GridLayout gridLayout = new GridLayout();
               jPanel_west = new JPanel();
               jPanel_west.setLayout(gridLayout);
               gridLayout.setRows(4);
               gridLayout.setColumns(1);
               jPanel_west.add(getJButton(), null);
               jPanel_west.add(getJButton1(), null);
               jPanel_west.add(getJButton2(), null);
               jPanel_west.add(getjButtonImprimer(), null);
          return jPanel_west;
Not very fun to work with... Now, what it does is that when i resize my JSplitPane, the button sizes change, proportionnally to the size changed... How can I get all this straight! I want my four buttons in the same size and I don't want them to resize all the time...
Anybody could help me with this??
Thanks
Guillaume

Answer 1

maybe you can change the layout to a BoxLayout, which honors MaximumSize()
here's a simple demo
import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.util.*;
class Testing extends JFrame
  public Testing()
    setLocation(400,300);
    setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    //JPanel westPanel = new JPanel();
    //westPanel.setLayout(new BoxLayout(westPanel,BoxLayout.Y_AXIS));
    JPanel westPanel = new JPanel(new GridLayout(4,1));//comment out this, uncomment above 2 lines
    JButton btn1 = new JButton("1");
    btn1.setMaximumSize(new Dimension(100,30));
    westPanel.add(btn1);
    JButton btn2 = new JButton("2");
    btn2.setMaximumSize(new Dimension(100,30));
    westPanel.add(btn2);
    JButton btn3 = new JButton("3");
    btn3.setMaximumSize(new Dimension(100,30));
    westPanel.add(btn3);
    JButton btn4 = new JButton("4");
    btn4.setMaximumSize(new Dimension(100,30));
    westPanel.add(btn4);
    getContentPane().add(westPanel);
    pack();
  public static void main(String[] args){new Testing().setVisible(true);}
}