Recommendation for Layout Manager

Question

I am creating a GUI for an arcade game. It consist of a single JFrame with some JPanels and one JMenu as shown in the figure:

I've been trying using BorderLayout but it doesn't show the panels properly. What I get is that the JMenu shows properly. [1] adjusts its width to content the buttons inside it. The JPanel [2] fulfill almost the rest of the screen. And [3] shows just as a thin line at the end.

Here's the fragment of code that I use to put them in position:

    add(new TopMenu(), BorderLayout.PAGE_START);    // JMenu
    add(new LeftPanel(), BorderLayout.WEST);        // [1]
    add(new StatusPanel(), BorderLayout.CENTER);    // [2]
    add(new GameUI(), BorderLayout.LINE_END);       // [3]

Any suggestions of what could be provoking this behavior are welcome.

Answer 1

You can always nest JPanels/containers, each using its own layout. So the overall layout could be a BorderLayout with the menu at the BorderLayout.NORTH and the JPanel [1] on the BorderLayout.EAST side, then nest a JPanel into the BorderLayout.CENTER position using either another BorderLayout or a BoxLayout and put your other two JPanels into this JPanel. For instance this CENTER JPanel could use BorderLayout and it could hold JPanel [2] in its BorderLayout.NORTH position and JPanel [3] in its BorderLayout.CENTER position.

Answer 2

Your JPanel's have to have Swing components inside, or else they will shrink to the minimum size when you call pack() on the JFrame.

Since you're creating a game, you'll need to set the preferred size on your JPanel's, and set the preferred size on the JFrame. I'm assuming you'll want to paint at least one of the JPanel components directly using the paintComponent method.

You can nest JPanel-2 and JPanel-3 in a rightPanel. You can use FlowLayout for the rightPanel itself, as well as putting JPanel-1 and rightPanel into the JFrame.

If you insist on using a layout manager that will lay out the 3 JPanel's without nesting, you will have to use the GridBagLayout. JPanel-1 will be 1 column wide and 2 rows deep. JPanel-2 will be 1 column wide and 1 column deep. JPanel-3 will be 1 column wide and 1 column deep.

You'll still have to set the preferred size of the 3 JPanel's.