Working with multiple swing classes

Question

First off let me preface this by saying that I am relatively new to java and oop and am learning on my own.
I wrote a text editor by extending JFrame and then adding all the panels, menu items and the textarea all in the extended class. I have a second class that basically creates a new instance of the extended class.
My question is this: I decided that I wanted to 1)clean up the code and get some better encapsulation and 2) move to using internal frames for multiple documents. The problem is I'm unsure of how to do this. Should I create classes that extend components(IE extend JMenu to make a class that full makes my file menu)? If so, is there a way to perform operations on things in the class that instantiates the sub class? (IE if new file is selected is there a way that the parent frame can be instructed to create a new frame?)
I know that this is a pretty broad question and poorly worded due to my lack of knowledge, but any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Ryan

Answer 1

Well, in general the more classes the better. But this rule does not apply in constructing GUI. Keep the JMenu as a private instance of the class that extends JFrame. Basically keep all the GUI inside that JFrame class because you may need access to instance variables that are in JFrame. If you want to create another frame when the user selects something in JMenu, then you can create an inner class inside that JFrame class since it will have access to the private instances of the outer class. This will organize your code. Do not extend JFrame for that pop up window, JDialogs are for that. Check the Java Tutorial for using them.
Nikita