Eclipse Visual Editor: Components not shown in JTabbedPane

Question

I want to create a JTabbedPane in a Visual Class using the Visual Editor in Eclipse.

I selected JTabbedPane from the beans menu on the toolbar. I next clicked on the class to drop it in. So far, no problems. But wait, no tabs are showing up.

The tutorials on the web say to drop a component into the TabbedPane and the tabs will show up. I dropped a JLabel and no tabs showed up.

Deleted the JLabel using the design window. Dragged a JTextPane, still no tabs.

I drag a JTextfield, onto the TabbedPane (without deleting the JTextPane), still no tabs showing.

I set the "tabs_text" properties of the JTextField and the JTextPane. Still no tabs show up.

Also, the components are not showing on the TabbedPane. It's like a gray whole that just swallows things and no images are reflected back.

Anybody have a step by step tutorial, instructions or something similar for how to put a JTabbedPane onto a Visual Class and also components into the JTabbedPane? Pictures would be very helpful.

Do I have to use NetBeans or hand-code the JTabbedPane?

Note: I'm trying to create a tabbed pane (or notebook in other GUI terminology) with one tab for person's address and another tab for phone numbers.

Answer 1

The TabbedPanel is showing up. Here's what I did:

• I created a separate class, Residence, derived from JPanel. Added all the labels and fields.
• Modified the addTab statement to add the new panel.
• Changed the add method to use 2 parameters, not 4.
• Removed all "ve" comments, placed in the code by the Visual Editor.

I don't know which, any or if all of the above was necessary, but that is what I did and now the TabbedPane is showing in the Visual Editor.

Looks like the Visual Editor may be more useful to show what the form looks like rather than as a tool to build them.