Dialog with resize minimize or Frame depending on parent

Question

I would like to have a window that behaves like a Dialog, in the terms, that it closes with the parent window, however it shall behave like a normal Frame, especially it shall have the maximize/restore button. How can I create windows, that are bound to a parent window (they close when the parent is closed) and inherit some properties, i.e. the windowicon?

The best I can think off is writing my own class wich wraps a JFrame and takes a parent. This class installs a Listener to the parent and keeps track of all its instances, so it can close all instances when the parent is closed. Exit_on_close can not be used for the parent, since there is a rest of the application which is supposed to keep running.

So is there a an easy way, or do I have to roll my own class?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 29 '12 at 11:55

You can copy almost any JDialog behavior except its positioning on top of JFrame (there was some native solution for that case for Win platform but its a bad thing to use... really).

Here is an example of what you can do in just a few minutes:

ChildFrameTest.java

public class ChildFrameTest
{
    public static void main ( String[] args )
    {
        JFrame application = new JFrame ();
        application.setSize ( 600, 600 );
        application.setLocationRelativeTo ( null );
        application.setDefaultCloseOperation ( JFrame.DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE );

        JChildFrame tool = new JChildFrame ( application );
        tool.setModalExclusionType ( Dialog.ModalExclusionType.APPLICATION_EXCLUDE );
        tool.setSize ( 100, 600 );
        tool.setLocation ( application.getX () + application.getWidth (), application.getY () );

        new WindowFollowListener ( tool, application );

        application.setVisible ( true );
        tool.setVisible ( true );
    }

    public static class JChildFrame extends JFrame
    {
        public JChildFrame ( JFrame parent )
        {
            super ();
            parent.addWindowListener ( new WindowAdapter ()
            {
                public void windowClosing ( WindowEvent e )
                {
                    dispose ();
                }
            } );
        }
    }
}

And WindowFollowListener to add some nice child frame behavior:

WindowFollowListener.java

public class WindowFollowListener extends ComponentAdapter
{
    private boolean enabled = true;
    private Window followingWindow;
    private Window parentWindow;
    private Point ll;

    public WindowFollowListener ( Window followingWindow, Window parentWindow )
    {
        super ();

        this.followingWindow = followingWindow;
        this.parentWindow = parentWindow;
        this.ll = parentWindow.getLocation ();

        parentWindow.addComponentListener ( this );
    }

    public boolean isEnabled ()
    {
        return enabled;
    }

    public void setEnabled ( boolean enabled )
    {
        this.enabled = enabled;
    }

    public Window getFollowingWindow ()
    {
        return followingWindow;
    }

    public void setFollowingWindow ( Window followingWindow )
    {
        this.followingWindow = followingWindow;
    }

    public Window getParentWindow ()
    {
        return parentWindow;
    }

    public void setParentWindow ( Window parentWindow )
    {
        this.parentWindow = parentWindow;
    }

    public void componentResized ( ComponentEvent e )
    {
        this.ll = parentWindow.getLocation ();
    }

    public void componentMoved ( ComponentEvent e )
    {
        if ( enabled && followingWindow != null && parentWindow != null )
        {
            Point nl = parentWindow.getLocation ();
            Point fwl = followingWindow.getLocation ();
            followingWindow.setLocation ( fwl.x + nl.x - ll.x, fwl.y + nl.y - ll.y );
            this.ll = nl;
        }
    }
}

thank you, so basically I have to wrap my own as suspected but it is quite simple... . Thanks for the code example as well. — ted, Jun 29 '12 at 12:17
@ted yeh, just wrap JFrame and add some needed listeners so it would act like an attached frame. Also you can make the "child" frame act like modal JDialog by setting "setEnabled(false)" to the main frame. — Mikle Garin, Jun 29 '12 at 12:26

Dialog with resize minimize or Frame depending on parent

1 Answers1