Module java.desktop
Package javax.swing

Class JFrame

  • All Implemented Interfaces:
    ImageObserver, MenuContainer, Serializable, Accessible, RootPaneContainer, WindowConstants

    @JavaBean(defaultProperty="JMenuBar",
          description="A toplevel window which can be minimized to an icon.")
public class JFrame
extends Frame
implements WindowConstants, Accessible, RootPaneContainer
    An extended version of java.awt.Frame that adds support for the JFC/Swing component architecture. You can find task-oriented documentation about using JFrame in The Java Tutorial, in the section How to Make Frames.

    The JFrame class is slightly incompatible with Frame. Like all other JFC/Swing top-level containers, a JFrame contains a JRootPane as its only child. The content pane provided by the root pane should, as a rule, contain all the non-menu components displayed by the JFrame. This is different from the AWT Frame case. As a convenience, the add, remove, and setLayout methods of this class are overridden, so that they delegate calls to the corresponding methods of the ContentPane. For example, you can add a child component to a frame as follows: 

           frame.add(child);
    And the child will be added to the contentPane. The content pane will always be non-null. Attempting to set it to null will cause the JFrame to throw an exception. The default content pane will have a BorderLayout manager set on it. Refer to RootPaneContainer for details on adding, removing and setting the LayoutManager of a JFrame.

    Unlike a Frame, a JFrame has some notion of how to respond when the user attempts to close the window. The default behavior is to simply hide the JFrame when the user closes the window. To change the default behavior, you invoke the method setDefaultCloseOperation(int). To make the JFrame behave the same as a Frame instance, use setDefaultCloseOperation(WindowConstants.DO_NOTHING_ON_CLOSE).

    For more information on content panes and other features that root panes provide, see Using Top-Level Containers in The Java Tutorial.

    In a multi-screen environment, you can create a JFrame on a different screen device. See Frame for more information.

    Warning: Swing is not thread safe. For more information see Swing's Threading Policy.

    Warning: Serialized objects of this class will not be compatible with future Swing releases. The current serialization support is appropriate for short term storage or RMI between applications running the same version of Swing. As of 1.4, support for long term storage of all JavaBeans™ has been added to the java.beans package. Please see XMLEncoder.

    Since:
    1.2
    See Also:
    JRootPane, setDefaultCloseOperation(int), WindowListener.windowClosing(java.awt.event.WindowEvent), RootPaneContainer, Serialized Form