Question

I have a class that extends JPanel with several buttons on it. I would like to be able to set the font on all the buttons with one call to setFont(Font font); I defined the setFont method in the JPanel class as such:

public class MyPanel extends JPanel {
    private JButton[] buttons = new JButton[10];

    public MyPanel() {
        for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
            buttons[i] = new JButton(""+i);
            this.add(buttons[i]);
        }
    }

    public void setFont(Font font) {
        if(buttons != null) {
            for(JButton b : buttons) {
                b.setFont(font);
            }
        }
    }
}

However, the font on the button never changes. I understand that setFont is called by the JPanel constructor, but I don’t understand why, when I call it clearly AFTER the MyPanel object is created, the fonts aren’t passed on to the buttons.

Thanks everyone!

Brent

Answer 1

If you want all subsequent buttons in the application to use a different font, you can set the default before instantiating the panel:

UIManager.put("Button.font", new FontUIResource("Dialog", Font.BOLD, 24));

Addendum: A more focused approach might be to add instances of an extended JButton in your panel’s constructor:

buttons[i] = new MyButton(String.valueOf(i));
this.add(buttons[i]);

The new buttons would always have the same font:

private static class MyButton extends JButton {

    private static final Font font = new Font("Dialog", Font.BOLD, 24);

    public MyButton(String text) {
        super(text);
        this.setFont(font);
    }
}