JTextArea goes black when interacting with applet?

Question

For some reason, if you highlight the Text Area text the background turns black and therefore makes the text unreadable, also when I select the radio buttons at the bottom (see attached pictures), the whole text area then goes black, again making the text unreadable! Anyone know why it is doing this?

Here's the code for my text area...

        //Text area that displays the games instructions
    textAreaInstructions = new JTextArea(
        "To play choose your difficulty and then click start. \n\n" +
        "The aim of the game is to select the 'golden' rectangle, you will be presented with 4 \n" +
        "rectangles and you must choose one that has height and width proportions that represent \n" +
        "the golden ratio: 1.618. If you're not too sure what a golden rectangle looks like it's \n" +
        "best you start on beginner until you get the hang of it! \n\n" +
        "For every correctly identified golden rectangle you score 1 piece of 'Gold', however if you \n" +
        "incorrectly identify a golden rectangle, 1 piece of 'Gold' will be taken away from your \n" +
        "score. Remember, you only have 30 seconds, so collect as much 'Gold' as you can, good luck! \n"); 
    c.add (textAreaInstructions);
    textAreaInstructions.setBounds(130, 110, 600, 200);
    textAreaInstructions.setEditable(false);
    textAreaInstructions.setBackground( new Color(0, 0, 0, 0) ); //Transparent background to text area

Answer 1

Swing doesn't understand transparent colors. Instead, you MUST use setOpaque and pass it false

textAreaInstructions.setEditable(false);
//textAreaInstructions.setBackground( new Color(0, 0, 0, 0) );
textAreaInstructions.setOpaque(false);

You can use a JLabel with it's text wrapped in HTML as well, for example. JLabel is transparent by default