Question

I am attempting to learn Java (at this point GUI programming in Swing and as a concept in general) and I have managed to create a basic login page. What I want to do however is to have it change what is displayed somehow to a ‘home’ page, as it were. I can think of only two ways of doing this, the first being opening a new window and closing the old one and the second being somehow changing the frame the login page is in to whatever I want to display. How is this usually done in real-world applications?

Answer 1

There are a number of ways that it can be done including the two that you mentioned. It really depends on what you are trying to achieve. Something like a login form could be done with a JDialog that pops up over the main window such that you start the main window and the main window simply pops open a JDialog for credentials etc.

Sometimes you create multi document interfaces using JInternalFrame. Where the various windows that you need all appear to be within a bigger main window.

So if you were creating a simple UI then simply switching out the content of the JFrame as you suggested would suffice. You can use an apprpriate LayoutManager to assist such as a CardLayout.