Focus of Components inside JTabbedPane

Question

I am completely new to this.....

Well, actually I am having a JPanel having two panels(say upper and lower panel) upper panel is a JPanel and lower panel is a JTabbedPane..

inside the JtabbedPane I have two tabs. each tab contains a JPanel(having null layout) which has 1 or more components like jtextfield, jbutton, jscrollpane(with jtable) etc.............

the problem is that when i switch to any tab, i am not able to get the normal jpanel effect. the buttons cannot be clicked with mouse(can be clicked by pressing tab key for selecting the button n then pressing space key), the text field cannot be selected on mouse click(can be selected only by pressing tab key) etc.

so is there any solution for this ?? i want the panels inside the jtabbedpane to work as a normal jpanel would :) thank you :)

Answer 1

Without any MCVE it is hard to help, so i made a simple example app, that, i hope, fits on your app.

import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Dimension;

import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;


public class MainFrame extends JFrame {

    /**
     * 
     */
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    private static MainFrame frame;

    private MainFrame() {
        this.setTitle("Focus on JTabbedPane");
        this.setSize(new Dimension(800, 600));

        this.getContentPane().add(initComponents());
        this.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

    }

    private JPanel initComponents() {
        JPanel panel = new JPanel(new BorderLayout(10, 10));
        panel.add(new MyInfoPanel(), BorderLayout.NORTH);
        panel.add(new MyTabPanel(), BorderLayout.CENTER);

        return panel;
    }

    public static void createAndShowGui() {
        frame = new MainFrame();
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }



}

The first JPanel with only a Infotext

import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JPanel;


public class MyInfoPanel extends JPanel {

    /**
     * 
     */
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    public MyInfoPanel() {
        this.add(new JLabel("Some info text"));
    }

}

The MyTabbedPanel

import javax.swing.JTabbedPane;


public class MyTabPanel extends JTabbedPane {

    /**
     * 
     */
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    public MyTabPanel() {
        this.addTab("Tab 1", new FirstTabPanel());
        this.addTab("Tab 2", new SecondTabPanel());
    }

}

The two TabPanels

import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;

import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JTextField;


public class FirstTabPanel extends JPanel implements ActionListener {

    /**
     * 
     */
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    JButton button;
    JTextField tf;
    public FirstTabPanel() {
        tf = new JTextField("Textfield");
        this.add(tf);
        button = new JButton("Button");
        button.addActionListener(this);
        this.add(button);
    }

    @Override
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        if(e.getSource().equals(button)) {
            tf.setText("Button on was clicked!");
        }
    }
}

The SecondTabPanel

import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.event.KeyEvent;
import java.awt.event.KeyListener;

import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JTextArea;
import javax.swing.JTextField;


public class SecondTabPanel extends JPanel {

    /**
     * 
     */
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    JTextArea area;
    JTextField field;

    public SecondTabPanel() {

        this.setLayout(new BorderLayout(10, 10));

        field = new JTextField();
        this.add(field, BorderLayout.NORTH);
        area = new JTextArea();
        this.add(area, BorderLayout.CENTER);
        field.addKeyListener(new KeyListener() {

            @Override
            public void keyTyped(KeyEvent e) {
            }

            @Override
            public void keyReleased(KeyEvent e) {
                // TODO Auto-generated method stub

            }

            @Override
            public void keyPressed(KeyEvent e) {
                area.setText(area.getText() + e.getKeyChar());
            }
        });
    }


}

And start it

import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;


public class App {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {

            @Override
            public void run() {
                MainFrame.createAndShowGui();
            }
        });
    }
}

Hope this mini app will help you.