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The code for the project

If you'd like to download the code for this tutorial you can click here to download it as a tar file. The file contains several files that I'll explain briefly:

Filename Description
MainController.java This includes the main method that gets everything started. Essentially it just constructs the MainFrame and shows it.
MainFrame.java The purpose of this file is to serve as a "dialog launcher". I've scaled this down from a larger project that I'm working on, and in the larger project the buttons on this frame let me launch a variety of dialogs. For the purposes of this tutorial there is just one button though.
EditProjectPanel.java This is the full source code for the class I've shown throughout this tutorial. The most important part of this class is the buildProjectEditPanel method. This is the method that builds and returns the JPanel with the FormLayout.
ReusableDialog.java This is another artifact of my larger project. It is just a JDialog that I was using to add and remove panels from.
formlayout.jar You should download this jar file from https://forms.dev.java.net/. They should always have the latest, greatest version. At the time of this writing the file is named "Forms 1.0.6".

Please note that there are a few artifacts in these files, including extra methods like jbInit(), due to the fact that I created this project with JBuilder. (Yes, I could have cleaned those up ...)

To run the demo just include the FormLayout.jar file in your classpath, compile the files, and run the collection as an application, using the main method in the MainController class to launch it all, like this:

  java com.devdaily.formlayout.demo.MainController

 

 

Conclusion

The JGoodies FormLayout is both simple and powerful, almost an oxymoron these days. I've just demonstrated the biggest program I've had with the layout: understanding how to get components to resize vertically and horizontally.

I think I can improve on this method slightly by making my vertical-resizing solution a little more specific, but alas, that will have to wait for another tutorial. In the meantime I hope this works as well for you as it has for me.

 

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