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javaswingjcombobox

Grid selection popup for combo box

I have a JComboBox that lets you select a profile image - a gallery of sorts.

An image of my current combo box:

https://i.sstatic.net/hgfGr.png

You can already see how unwieldy this would be, should I add more images.

Essentially, I would like to "replace" the popup with a grid-based one, to allow for easier selection of an image.
I would like to keep the appearance of the combo box itself, however - showing details about the currently selected image.

The only way I can currently see to do this is to use a custom Look and Feel UI class, which AFAIK would make the combo box look out-of-place due to the rest of my app using the system L&F.

Solution

  • The popup of the combo box uses a JList to display the items.

    You can configure the JList to use horizontal wrapping:

    BasicComboPopup popup = (BasicComboPopup)comboBox.getAccessibleContext().getAccessibleChild(0);
JScrollPane scrollPane = (JScrollPane)popup.getComponent(0);
JList list = (JList) scrollPane.getViewport().getView();
list.setLayoutOrientation(JList.HORIZONTAL_WRAP);
list.setVisibleRowCount(2);

    Read the section from the Swing tutorial on Initializing a List for more information.