JAVA SWING - Creating Animation using Swing Timer

Question

I am trying to setup a program that enables the user to display a transition when clicking the next and previous button. When pressing next, the swing timer should trigger and start the animation. When transitioning, there should be a flag that states it is in the transition period. The Swing timer should fire once every tenth of a second and essentially last 1 second.

public class guiCreation {
static Timer timer;
static boolean flag = false; 
private static void guiInterface() {
next.addActionListener(new ActionListener(){
            timer = new Timer(1000, this);
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
                nextGest();
            }
        });
        //should go to the next tab
        previous.addActionListener(new ActionListener(){
            //if the list gets to the beginning, disable button
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
                prevGest();
            }
        });
}
public static void nextGest() {
        timer.start();
        previous.setEnabled(true);
        next.setEnabled(true);
        //if the list gets to the end, disable button
        if (cardLayout.isNextCardAvailable()) {
            status.setText(" Next button has been clicked");
            //System.out.println("This is the" + size);
            cardLayout.next(cardPanel);
            next.setEnabled(cardLayout.isNextCardAvailable());
        }
    }
    public static void prevGest() {
        if (cardLayout.isPreviousCardAvailable()) {
            timer.start();
            next.setEnabled(true);
            previous.setEnabled(true);
            status.setText(" Previous button has been clicked");
            cardLayout.previous(cardPanel);
            previous.setEnabled(cardLayout.isPreviousCardAvailable());
        }
    }

}

Answer 1

This: "The Swing timer should fire once every tenth of a second ..." -- does not agree with this: timer = new Timer(1000, this); Your Timer is firing once every second, not every 10th of a second.

Instead, you should:

• Create a new Timer(100, ...), one that fires every 10th of a second
• Store in an instance field the start time in msecs when the Timer begins (likely do this in your button's ActionListener)
• Within the Timer's ActionListener get the current mSecs and use this to check the elapsed time
• Stop the Timer via ((Timer) e.getSource()).stop(); once 1 full second has elapsed
• No need for a flag, since all you need to do is to check if the Timer isn't null and if it .isRunning(). e.g., if (timer != null && timer.isRunning()) { -- then the animation is proceeding.

Unrelated suggestion:

• Get out of the static world and into the instance world. You're programming in Java, a language that is built to use OOPs from the ground up, and you don't want to fight against the OOPs paradigm.