Question

How can i implement a 3-state toggle button? I’m using eclipse and windowBuilder and i’m coding a program which has to have 3-state buttons. I used JToggleButtons and their two state for two bu can’t implement the third state. What can i do?

P.S. I want three icon state.

Answer 1

Maybe you can look at the code used by com.jidesoft.swing.TristateCheckBox:
See TristateCheckBox.java.

It does inherit from JToggleButton and has three different icon states.

/**
 * Maintenance tip - There were some tricks to getting this code
 * working:
 * <p/>
 * 1. You have to overwite addMouseListener() to do nothing
 * 2. You have to add a mouse event on mousePressed by calling
 * super.addMouseListener()
 * 3. You have to replace the UIActionMap for the keyboard event
 * "pressed" with your own one.
 * 4. You have to remove the UIActionMap for the keyboard event
 * "released".
 * 5. You have to grab focus when the next state is entered,
 * otherwise clicking on the component won't get the focus.
 * 6. You have to make a TristateDecorator as a button model that
 * wraps the original button model and does state management.
 *
 * @author Dr. Heinz M. Kabutz
 */
public class TristateCheckBox extends JCheckBox {