Tutorial Step 6 Step 8

Creating a UI with nested layouts

Step 7: Creating a status bar

Create a status bar in panel 4 at the bottom as follows:

  1. Add three Swing JLabel components to panel 4 as shown below. Don't worry about their sizes. Just make sure they are contained by panel 4. This panel will change to GridLayout later which will make the labels the same size.

  2. Delete the default values in the labels' text property.

  3. To achieve a three dimensional look seen in many status bars, change the border property for the three JLabel components to LoweredBevel.

  4. Save your work.

Your status bar should look something like this:

At this point, you have completed the first phase of the UI design work, adding all the components to the containers, starting with the larger outside containers and working down to the smallest components inside these containers.

Next you'll start converting the panels to other layouts.

Tutorial Step 6 Step 8