unable to understand scrollpane

Question

I am new to Java GUI Development and I am unable to understand scrollpane for dynamic label addition during runtime in JAVA SWING. I can't find very good documentation for the swing components as well. Can someone please explain me how Scrollpane works ? Some of my questions may sound very stupid but I have been struggling with them since yesterday :-

1.) What is scrollpane ?-->Very basic I know...! I guess if this gets answered, everything else would be resolved.

2.) Is scrollpane added to Frame ? Or, is Frame added To scrollpane ? Or, both of them are OK ? Can we add panel to scrollpane ? A textarea ?

3.) Can we make ANY swing component to be scrollable if we use scrollpane ? If yes, how ?

4.) If lets say some component (say frame) is connected to a scrollpane (not sure if "connect" even makes sense here) AND I wish to add new labels to this scrollable area, how should i do it ? Should I simply add the new label to the main enclosing frame ? or, should I add it to the scrollpane ?

5.) Why should we use the gridlayout (or similar) function always before adding something to scrollpane/frame and really, what does it do ?

Thanks for any guidance you can give !! If you feel that my questions are too basic, a pointer to some good documentation would not be such a bad idea as well.

Answer 1

Here is a list of links:

JScrollPane tutorial and documentation:

• http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/components/scrollpane.html
• http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/javax/swing/JScrollPane.html

JFrame tutorial and documentation:

• http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/swing/JFrame.html
• http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/components/frame.html

GridLayout tutorial and documentation:

• http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/gridbag.html
• http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/awt/GridLayout.html

All of the answers to your questions are there.