====== JFrame JLabel FlowLayout and MCIcon ======

{{tag>aswing tutorial}}

This tutorial will show you how to use the JFrame , JLabel , the FlowLayout and the MCIcon to
create a MessageBox. Lets create our main class MessageBox.as which extends JFrame. We will
need a JLabel instance to display the message and two JButton instances for the ok and cancel
buttons .We will need to create two JPanel instances one for the JLabel which will display our
message and icon and one for the ok and cancel buttons.

<code actionscript>

import org.aswing. *;
import org.aswing.utils.Delegate;
import org.aswing.geom.Dimension;
class MessageBox extends JFrame
{
	private var buttonsPanel : JPanel;
	private var labelPanel : JPanel;
	private var okBtn : JButton;
	private var cancelBtn : JButton;
	private var messageDisplay : JLabel;
	private var title : String;
	private var message : String;
	public functiopublic function MessageBox (title : String , message : String,)
	{
		super (_root, true);
		this.title = title;
		this.message = message;
	}
	public static function main (Void) : Void
	{
		var myWindow : MessageBox = new MessageBox ( "Information",
		"ASWing ROCKS!!.\nLike you did'nt know that already.");
		myWindow.setLocation (50, 50);
		myWindow.setSize (300, 150);
		myWindow.setResizable (false);
		myWindow.show ();
	}
}

</code>


The title and the message string variables store the value for the title bar for our frame and
the message to be displayed in the JLabel component respectively. The constructor takes the
title and message as parameters. The main method creates an instance of the MessageBox
and passes in the two string parameters. We then set the location and size for our frame and
make sure its not resizable.

Next we instantiate our button instances and our buttonPanel instance

<code actionscript>
buttonsPanel =new JPanel();
okBtn = new JButton ("Ok");
cancelBtn = new JButton ("Cancel");
</code>

Next we set the preferred size for our buttons.

<code actionscript>
okBtn.setPreferredSize(75,22);
cancelBtn.setPreferredSize(75,22);
</code>


Here we use the setPreferredSize method and not setSize because the if a container has a
layout then it will use the components getPreferredSize() but if a container has an EmptyLayout
then we can use setSize method to set the components dimensions. We will use the FlowLayout
to arrange the buttons and the label in their respective panels.
A FlowLayout arranges components in a left-to-right flow, much like lines of text in a
paragraph. Flow layouts are typically used to arrange buttons within a panel. It will arrange
buttons left to right until no more buttons are able to fit on the same line and each line is
centered.

<code actionscript>
buttonsPanel.setLayout(new FlowLayout(FlowLayout.RIGHT,20,8));
buttonsPanel.append(okBtn);
buttonsPanel.append(cancelBtn);
</code>

We set our FlowLayout such that the buttons are right aligned and the horizontal gap between
components is 20 and the vertical gap between the components is 8. We then add it to the
buttons panel. We create the same layout for the labelPanel and the JLabel instance to the
pane

<code actionscript>
labelPanel = new JPanel();
messageDisplay=new JLabel(message);
labelPanel.setLayout(new FlowLayout(FlowLayout.CENTER));
labelPanel.append(messageDisplay);
</code>

We now add the two JPanel instances to our frame and set the title.

<code actionscript>
getContentPane ().append (labelPanel, BorderLayout.CENTER);
getContentPane ().append (buttonsPanel, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
setTitle(title);
</code>

Next we create a method to set our icon for the label instance.

<code actionscript>
public function setDisplayIcon(icon:Icon):Void{
   messageDisplay.setIcon(icon);
}
</code>


Now in our main method we create an MCIcon instance and pass that icon instance to the
method created above. The MCIcon lets us create an icon by passing in a linakge id of a
movieclip. In this way we can create our icon in gimp / photoshop , use swfmill to create the
swf which contains the image as a movieclip with a linkage id , and use that movieclip as an
icon in ASWing. We can use the MCPanel for similar usage but we will talk more about MCPanel
in detail in another tutorial.

<code actionscript>
var info:MCIcon =new MCIcon("INFO",51,43);
myWindow.setDisplayIcon(info);
</code>


The other two parameters passed to the MCIcon constructor are the width and the height of
the movieclip. Below is a screenshot of a slightly modified version of this example. You can
of course extend this example to create event listenters for the buttons to call other methods
that you may need to call. Hope you have a better understanding of how to create more
complex GUI`s using panels and layout managers

{{ :messagebox.swf?550x400 }}

MessageBox .as
---------------------------
<code actionscript>

 /**
* @author firdosh
*/
import org.aswing. *;
class MessageBox extends JFrame
{
	private var buttonsPanel : JPanel;
	private var labelPanel : JPanel;
	private var okBtn : JButton;
	private var cancelBtn : JButton;
	private var title : String;
	private var message : String;
	private var messageDisplay : JLabel;
	private var icon : MCIcon;
	public function MessageBox (title : String , message : String)
	{
		super (_root, true);
		this.title = title;
		this.message = message;
		buttonsPanel = new JPanel ();
		okBtn = new JButton ("Yes");
		cancelBtn = new JButton ("No");
		okBtn.setPreferredSize (75, 22);
		cancelBtn.setPreferredSize (75, 22);
		buttonsPanel.setLayout (new FlowLayout (FlowLayout.RIGHT, 20, 8));
		buttonsPanel.append (okBtn);
		buttonsPanel.append (cancelBtn);
		labelPanel = new JPanel ();
		messageDisplay = new JLabel (message);
		labelPanel.setLayout (new FlowLayout (FlowLayout.CENTER));
		labelPanel.append (messageDisplay);
		getContentPane ().append (labelPanel, BorderLayout.CENTER);
		getContentPane ().append (buttonsPanel, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
		setTitle (title);
	}
	public function setDisplayIcon (icon : Icon) : Void
	{
		messageDisplay.setIcon (icon);
	}
	public static function main (Void) : Void
	{
		var myWindow : MessageBox = new MessageBox ("Information", "ASWing ROCKS!!.\nDon`t you agree ;).");
		var info : MCIcon = new MCIcon ("INFO", 51, 43);
		myWindow.setDisplayIcon (info);
		myWindow.setLocation (50, 50);
		myWindow.setSize (300, 150);
		myWindow.setResizable (false);
		myWindow.show ();
	}
}
</code>